


stay in the game

by altschmerzes



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brother-Sister Relationships, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Major Character Injury, Post-Season/Series 01, Pre-Season/Series 02, Rescue Missions, Some tags apply to future chapters, Team as Family, cameos by the coltons and steve mcgarrett, everyone cares about mac a lot: the musical, just like.... a lot of hugs later in the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-04-04 00:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 60,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14007726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altschmerzes/pseuds/altschmerzes
Summary: In the middle of the morning on a normal day, Mac is taken and circumstances outside their control stop Jack, Riley, and Bozer from being able to go after him. It's going to take help from a lot of unlikely allies to find Mac and bring him home before the Organization goes too far and he's lost to them for good.(or the one where mac is kidnapped, debts and old friends are called on, jack is a protector who hates helplessness, riley gets to be the big sister this time, and bozer actually makes a very good operative)(chapter specific warnings in chapter endnotes)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so i haven't tried to write anything longer than like a 5 + 1 since several calendar years ago. and then this happened. buckle up y'all it's gonna be a wild ride.
> 
> a few quick notes before we get started.
> 
> will feature characters from canonical crossovers making minor and secondary appearances (capitalizing off the crossover w/ hawaii 5-0 and the other canon h50 crossover with ncis la to borrow some characters from other canons) but my editor friend hasn't seen either of those shows so everything will be checked for coherence to people unfamiliar with them, and they are certainly not the point or focus here. 
> 
> expect a lot of found family, h/c, callbacks to minor characters from season one, and my personal #thoughts on the whole chrysalis thing. also no ships/romance. ready set let's go.

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who’s been told_
> 
> _It’s finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- “Spent Gladiator 2”, The Mountain Goats_

Mac was supposed to come to the movie theater with them. It was a one-day throwback screening of _The Dark Crystal_ , and Mac had spent many a car ride listening to Bozer’s animated voice in the passenger’s seat, extolling the virtues of Jim Henson’s puppetry, _Dark Crystal_ featuring prominently among his favorite examples. It was pure luck that landed the screening in the theater near their house, and upon discovering that Riley had somehow managed to make it this far in life without seeing it at all, the three of them made plans.

That was last week, before things started getting weird, before the odd mail and Mac’s lamp staying on far later than even he usually went to bed. In all honesty, when the bail comes in the form of sporadic eye contact and distracted fidgeting accompanying a claim of ‘some things he needs to take care of’, Bozer isn’t surprised. He and Riley had spent bit needling him about it before letting it drop and moving on with their day. Mac would make it up to him later by watching both _Dark Crystal_ and _The Labyrinth_ , and probably even let him rewind and replay as many scenes as he wanted, pausing and explaining exactly what was coolest about each of the costumes. Whatever was going on, Mac would tell him about it when he was good and ready.

Now, a couple hours later, Bozer is just turning his own phone back on, ready to text Mac a good natured ‘hope you had as much fun with your errands as we did at the movie’. Before he could finish composing the message, however, Bozer’s phone catches up to the data it received while it was off, and it chimes, a voicemail alert. When he sees this, Bozer stops outside the car with his hand halfway to his keys, frowning at his phone.

“-Bozer?”

It takes a couple moments for Bozer to register that Riley has been trying to get his attention while he stood frowning at the screen. He looks up cringes, then explains.

“I got a voicemail from Mac while my phone was off. It’s weird, he doesn’t usually leave messages.”

Riley’s face morphs into a look of fond exasperation and she gestures at the door. “Well can you unlock the car so I can get in while you check your messages in the middle of a parking lot?” she says pointedly, and Bozer feels his cheeks heat up, quickly scrambling his keys from his pocket and letting Riley in.

With that taken care of, Bozer remembers the voicemail and hits play, holding the phone up to his ear and ignoring as hard as he can the unsettled feeling in his stomach. As he listens to his best friend’s voice on the machine, however, the feeling surges, until the message ends with an explosive sound that has him jerking the phone sharply away from his head. With fear suddenly spiking in Bozer’s chest, he yanks the door open and gets quickly into the car, tossing the phone into Riley’s lap as he goes.

“You have to listen to that message,” Bozer says, interrupting Riley’s startled question. “And we have to get back, _now_.”

Lifting the phone gingerly, expression indicating she’s afraid it might detonate at any second, Riley turns the volume up and sets it to play loud enough for them both to hear. The sound of the voicemail fills the anxiety-riddled air of the car.

“Hey Boze,” Mac’s slightly distorted voice says from the small speaker. “Sorry I bailed on you guys for the movie. I had a… Listen, there’s something I have to tell you. Something’s been going on, and I’ve been keeping it to myself, but it’s gotten too- I need to tell everyone now, and I need your help to tell Riley and Jack. So-”

The message ends with a loud, violent sound, an impact that reverberates through the car and makes Riley jump. Bozer feels her direct her gaze away from where she had been watching the display count out the twenty seconds of the message and back to him. He keeps on staring at the road, mouth set in a grim line.

“Bozer,” Riley says in a numb, flat voice. The sentence dies there as she can’t find anything else to say, lost for words with which to express what that message had evoked in her. Bozer can relate. He doesn’t have any words either, and it’s a tense, silent ten minute drive home from there.

Before Bozer has hardly parked, Riley is out of the car, heading directly into the house with Bozer a few steps behind her. In hindsight, it was maybe not the smartest plan to barrel right into an unknown situation, but in the moment, neither of them are doing much planning of any kind. The first thing they see is the front door hanging partially open with the hall visible from the porch. Inside the house, sticking close together with a baseball bat Bozer snagged out of the front closet held up in front of them, they quickly establish that, aside from the two of them, there isn’t a single person inside the house. Even more frightening however, is what they find on the back porch.

On the wood floor of the deck near the house is Mac’s phone. Or, more accurately, what’s _left_ of it. The sight of Mac’s phone laying on the ground, shattered into jagged pieces, makes it abundantly clear what the sound at the end of the voicemail had been. As if that hadn’t been enough, Bozer sees something else that causes his heart to jump into hyperdrive, pulse thundering loudly enough that he can hear it in his ears. Blood spots the pieces of the phone, a dozen or so drops sporadically dotted across the floor.

“Jack?” Bozer hears behind him. He turns around to see Riley standing next to the kitchen counter, one hand pressed to the countertop, knuckles blanched, the other holding her phone up to her ear. “Jack you need- we’re at Bozer and Mac’s place, we need you, Mac is _gone_ , and-” Riley stops abruptly, hand dropping to her side, now silent cell held loosely at her thigh. “He hung up. I think he’s on his way.”

The knowledge that Jack is coming is the only thing that keeps Bozer from losing his mind completely between when Riley makes the call and when he walks in the front door. It’s a mantra he repeats to himself over and over, trying to swallow past the lump in his throat. _Jack is coming. He’ll be here soon. Jack will know what to do_.

“Tell me what happened,” are the first words out of Jack’s mouth, the door slamming shut behind him. Riley and Bozer turn to face him immediately, both of their expressions a mix of dread and relief.

“I got a message while Riley and me were at the movies,” Bozer says, his voice thready and uneven in both pitch and volume. It sounds less like organized speech and more like words falling out of a person, a jumble of panicked, confused syllables all tripping and tumbling over one another. “It- Mac said- I-” Frustrated and getting nowhere trying to explain things himself, Bozer changes tack, playing the message again out loud instead. The brief voicemail isn’t any easier to listen to the third time than it had been the first.

When it gets close to the twenty second mark Bozer braces himself, remembering with crystal clarity how it ended. The loud, brutal sound draws flinches from both him and Riley. Jack’s only visible reaction is a clench of his jaw and a tightening of his folded arms, muscles tensing at the noise.

“And then we got home and-” Bozer flings an arm over at the ruined mess that used to be Mac’s phone. “He’s gone, Jack. He’s gone and someone took him and he’s _hurt_ , and-”

“What do we _do_?” Riley demands, question breaking through Bozer’s devolving ramble. “There’s protocol for this, right? I mean, when I- When my mom, and, like- There’s something we’re supposed to _do_ , right?”

“He’s _hurt_ ,” Bozer repeats. His mind is stuck like a record player whose needle has come off the track. _There’s blood on the ground, there’s blood on the ground, there’s blood on the ground._

“What should- I can-”

“We can’t do _anything_ ,” Jack says, strong voice cutting a clean path through the discord thrumming in the air so thick it can practically be touched, “until you two tell me - _slowly_ and _calmly_ \- exactly what happened today. Starting from the beginning.”

Shepherding Riley and Bozer away from the porch with the pieces of bloodied Gorilla Glass, Jack shoves the coffee table back away from the couch and perches on the edge of it, facing them.

“Talk,” he says, short and clipped, and this is the first moment Bozer really sees the fear seep through the cracks of Jack’s composure.

For just a second, in the edge that hardens his characteristically easygoing voice and in the expression that flickers across his face, Bozer sees that Jack is afraid too. This, more than anything else that has already happened, truly shakes Bozer to the core.

“Riley and I went to the movies,” Bozer says, looking down at his hands where they are fidgeting in his lap. “Mac was going to come, and he bailed last second. He’s been getting letters this week, it’s- He hasn’t been himself. I’ve been worried. I thought he’d tell me when he was ready, but-”

“‘I need your help to tell Riley and Jack’,” Riley quotes from the voicemail, and Bozer nods. “You think he was talking about the letters?”

Jack’s brain churns over what he’s told as Bozer talks about the letters. The young man repeats the information a couple of times, clearly too frazzled to entirely track what he’s saying. Jack doesn’t stop him though, going so far as to gesture at Riley, stopping her from reminding Bozer that he’s already said this part. Each time Bozer recounts the letters, Jack learns something different.

There’d been no return address. Mac hadn’t hidden them, but he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about their contents either. There were four of them spaced out over the last week and a half, two weeks.

“Do you know where he kept them?” Jack asks, this time interrupting Bozer’s third or so insistence that ‘I thought he’d tell me, I didn’t want to push him into shutting down’. “I need to see them.”

“Jack, I-”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was related,” Jack says. “I know how Mac is about privacy, trust me, I wouldn’t ask if he- If we didn’t _need to know_.”

For a few moments, Bozer wavers, looking torn between loyalty to his absent roommate and palpable fear for Mac’s wellbeing. Finally, without a word, he gets up and heads down the hall to Mac’s room. He returns and just as taciturnly hands Jack the small stack of letters. The papers are handwritten in a messy script resembling Mac’s own, and they bear the appearance of having been folded and unfolded many times. It’s clear that Mac has read and reread them over and over in an attempt to process the information contained in them, and Jack’s heart constricts painfully.

“This is a trick,” Jack mutters, eyes scanning over the first dated letter and catching up short on the sign-off.

 _Dad_.

“It says they’re from his father,” he explains, not taking his eyes off the page, “but it’s not true.”

“How do you know?” The question comes from Riley, the one of the three of them the least familiar with the subject and person of James MacGyver.

Setting the other three onto the coffee table next to where he sits, Jack holds up the first, contents facing outwards where Riley and Bozer can see.

“It’s a letter, it’s signed ‘dad’. What’s your point?” Riley asks, clearly getting frustrated. Just as Jack is about to elaborate on the evidence behind his immediately drawn conclusion that these letters were not, in fact, actually from James, Bozer speaks up.

“It’s too long.” Before Riley can ask again, Bozer continues. “I didn’t know his dad very long or very well, but the guy never talked much. He didn’t say much and then one day he was gone. That letter, it’s… Like I said, I didn’t know the guy long but if I hadn’t talked to my kid in more than a decade, that-” He points at the lengthy, full page correspondence. “-is not what I would start with, and I’m…” Bozer waves a hand, indicating his general person. “I’m _me_.”

Riley tilts her head to the side, conceding the point, and Jack nods.

“From what Mac has said,” Jack continues on Bozer’s line of thought, a sour taste in his mouth at discussing any of this without Mac’s permission or presence, hating that the breach of confidence is necessary as it so clearly has become if they’re to get to the bottom of this, “he was never much of a communicator. I can’t see him doing this.” A small wave of the letter in his hand punctuates his point. “Besides, there’s just too many things that don’t line up. The letter Mac sent got returned. We couldn’t find the man in the _country_ , never mind close enough to have left this in the mailbox. No return address, I just… It might say it’s from James, but I don’t think so. I think someone was playing him, and knew just how to do it.”

Eyes suddenly widening, Bozer’s hand darts out, knocking two letters to the carpet in his grab for the third. Jack wordlessly allows him to take it, watching Bozer’s face closely. Bozer’s lips move silently as he scans what Jack glimpses to be the fourth and most recent letter, dated just two days previously. As he reaches the end, the paper drops into his lap, held loosely in lax fingers.

“He went to meet this guy. This morning. When we were at the movies, he was… _Shit_.” Only in the last word is there any kind of emotion, Bozer’s voice hollow and flat in a way that sends a chill down the back of Jack’s neck.

“It’s time to call this in,” he says, leaning down to pick up the two letters on the floor, and accepting the fourth from Bozer’s outstretched hand. “I’ll let Matty know what’s happened, and we’ll find him.” Taking a moment to pause and make direct eye contact with both of them, Jack waits until he’s sure both Bozer and Riley are paying attention before reiterating, “Whatever is going on, _whatever’s_ happened, we’re going to find Mac, and bring him home. Okay?”

Riley nods shallowly and Bozer returns his look with equally as strong a gaze, the faith in his voice when he says, “Okay,” adding yet more weight to Jack’s already strained shoulders.

The drive to the office is tense and anxious. Jack glances back periodically to while Bozer and Riley have opted to sit together in the back, stress leading them to seek the relative reassurance of proximity. His own stress is manifesting in a creeping pins and needles sensation beginning in the base of his skull, winding down through his arms into his hands. HIs hands which grip the steering wheel so tightly that when he goes to adjust around a turn, his knuckles ache at the movement. Focusing on the road doesn’t work to distract his brain from the direction it keeps trying to go in, and Jack gives up, allowing the questions to start examining themselves.

Guiding the car through stoplights and around corners on the familiar route from Mac’s house to the office, Jack runs through the previous two weeks, searching retrospectively for any indication that something was going on with Mac. He can’t remember anything frightening. Just a brief conversation where, after a couple days of mildly worrying behavior indicative of stress, he’d asked if Mac was alright.

 _I’m fine_ , had been the answer. (Of course had been the damn answer.) _Yeah. I’m fine. I’m just tired._

Now, as he pulls the car into a space near the door and makes his way swiftly inside, not bothering to check and make sure Bozer and Riley are following, Jack wishes he hadn't let it drop so easily. The benefit of hindsight is a vicious lens to look through, and Jack fiercely chastises himself for not pushing harder.

When he reaches their usual conference room, Jack finds Matty already waiting there, arms crossed and face grim. Not once has that expression ever spelled good news, and a knot of tension grips Jack’s shoulders. He walks in first and gets right to the point.

“Mac is gone. Someone took him.” It's information he’d already given her on the phone, but it bore repeating, if only to assist Jack in convincing himself this is actually happening.

“I know,” Matty says. There's a slight note of something odd just under the words that sets Jack further on edge, if such a thing is even, at this point, possible.

“What are we doing to do?”

Bozer’s question draws Matty’s attention to his and Riley’s presence behind Jack, hovering uncertainly just inside the room.

“I need the two of you to step outside,” Matty says, throwing all three of them for a loop.

“Excuse me?”

“Matty-”

“Matty, they're-”

 _“Now.”_ The force of Matty’s order is harsh, even for her, and Jack’s veins go cold, adrenaline washing down his nervous system. Something is wrong. Something is very, _very_ wrong. “I need to talk to Jack privately, _now._ ”

Without another word of protest, Bozer and Riley leave. Jack half watches them leave, registering them standing outside in the hallway watching through the soundproof glass before turning back to face Matty.

“I don't know what's going on with you, but Mac is _gone_ , and I- _we_ need to get out there looking for him _right now_ if we're gonna find out who took him before-”

“We already know,” Matty says, interrupting. Her expression is one Jack has only ever seen on her once before, once when things had gone horribly, near fatally wrong.

“What?”

“We don't need to investigate who took MacGyver. We already know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter one specific warnings: none i can think of this time!
> 
> please let me know what you think! i'm excited for the rest of this fic and i hope you are too.
> 
> (also, matty is Not the villain here. just so it's clear.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gonna do my best to stick to a twice weekly posting schedule, but we'll see how it goes. again, just to reiterate, matty is NOT the villain here. i love her, and explanations are coming.

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- "Spent Gladiator 2", The Mountain Goats_

_Several hours ago_

_Mac and Bozer’s house_

When the door swings shut behind Bozer and Riley, Mac has a moment of vivid, intense regret. The sense that he’s made the wrong choice is so overpowering that he toys with the idea that he could run out the door after them. He could tell them he’s changed his mind. He could go to see _The Dark Crystal_ with his friends and when he gets home, he could burn the letters, forget about the meeting. He could call the whole thing with his father a dodged bullet - but then the car in the driveway starts, shattering his daydream. Tires on gravel play the background track to Mac not moving.

His phone chimes in his hand, his GPS app reminding him of the address he’d requested directions to. No, he can’t just pretend this never happened. There are still things he has to confront before he and his family can move on with their lives. His father is one of them.

Swallowing hard and looking at the time, Mac shrugs his jacket on and grabs his keys, heading out to drive to a park along a running trail in the Los Angeles hills. It’s one he’s ran along before, and the drive is short enough not to be unreasonable while long enough to give him plenty of time to overthink absolutely every aspect of this whole situation. By the time he parks the car and gets out at the proposed meeting place, Mac’s stomach is in knots and a headache has begun to pound at his temples.

A quick scan of the area displays a few scattered people present. There’s a young man pushing a stroller, two older women sitting on a bench, and on the grass, someone Mac guesses to be a student, judging by the UCLA sweatshirt and the binder spread out in front of them. A bicyclist zips past on Mac’s left as he stands there, sending his heart thundering in his chest with a slight breeze of displaced air whipped up by the near miss. Mac decides to wait fifteen minutes - after all he’s five minutes early to the agreed upon time - then, if his dad still doesn’t appear, he’ll head home and hide out in his room until Bozer and Riley return from the movie.

Operating mostly on autopilot, Mac starts walking. He pulls his jacket tighter around his torso, arms close at his sides and hands jammed in his pockets. At the moment, he figures he doesn’t exactly paint the picture of ease and relaxation, especially once he registers that, as he has been meandering around this park, he’s been moving in a defensive pattern. The way he is navigating this distant, barely familiar corner of land at the outskirts of his city is in line with tactics of evasion. How he’s been trained to move in hostile territory.

Mac stops moving, pausing in the corner of a turn where the running path splits from the park area. From there it would be difficult for anyone in the park itself to see him, while at the same time providing him with a clear view of them.

An abrupt sound behind him makes Mac whip around, eyes wide. The jogger dressed in teal spandex, an iPhone strapped to her upper arm, gives him a weird look and a wide berth, continuing down the gentle slope of the path. Shaking his head a few times, hard enough to send his hair into his eyes, Mac huffs out a short, frustrated breath. The longer he stands there, the more nauseated he feels. It doesn’t take long after that for him to start walking, pace quickening the closer he gets to his parked car.

This was a mistake.

As he yanks open the door, drops into the car, and pulls out of the lot, Mac can’t even begin to articulate how angry and disgusted he feels with himself. The entire time he’d stood in that park, which all accumulated to less than ten minutes total, all he’d wanted was to look to his side and see Jack standing there. He’d wanted Jack’s steady, protective presence, or Riley’s razor sharp competence, or Bozer’s dogged loyalty. What he hadn’t wanted - what he hadn’t, as it turned out, been able to _cope_ with - was waiting to see his dad in that park alone, no one to have his back or drive the getaway car if it went sour. No one who even knew he was there.

Mac slows at a stop sign and shakes his head again, face twisted in a frustrated sneer. What kind of an operative can’t face his own father alone? Him, apparently.

The house is just as empty when he gets home as it had been when he’d left. Mac stands in the front entry with his jacket still on, keys still in hand, trying to decide what to do next. At the moment, the only thing he wants to do is go in his room, pull the covers over his head, and go to sleep. Never mind that it’s not even quite noon yet, and there is a whole day in front of him. Since the letters started, Mac hadn’t exactly been getting the best sleep of his life, waking often and disturbed almost nightly by unsettling dreams he’s never able to actually remember. He’s sure that if he took a tablet of the over-the-counter sleep medications it sometimes took to turn his brain off and get actual rest at night, he could be comfortably not-conscious for at least a couple of hours, if not into the evening.

Something stops him before he can reach the bathroom cabinet they’re contained in, however. Mac has caught sight of the letters, sitting on his desk, visible through his partially open bedroom door.

The decision about whether to tell someone when something is going on with him has never been an easy one for Mac to make. Well, maybe that’s not true. It would be more accurate to say it’s always been far _too_ easy, the answer always being an automatic ‘say nothing, handle it yourself’. It’s the other direction that Mac finds it near impossible to go in. The idea of going, letters in hand, to his team and admitting ‘I can’t do this alone’ is nothing short of paralyzing. If it were work related, that would be one thing, but this? Everything with his father, it’s too personal.

(Then again, something has been bothering him from the start, oddities and inconsistencies that set his teeth on edge and his nerves jangling. Something isn’t right here, and only his fear of a full blown investigation turning up nothing but a long-absent parent and a misfired case of what Jack calls ‘bad vibes’ has kept Mac from taking this right to them. A rock and a hard place. On the one hand: the sinking feeling something far deeper and more sinister is at work here. On the other hand: the likelihood that he’s making ghouls out of shadows, and the monster in the dark will be revealed to be his own reflection in the mirror when he runs to someone else to turn on the light.)

This is always what it was going to come to, Mac thinks, giving up on his short-lived plan of sleeping the rest of the day away. He slumps against the hallway wall, feeling suddenly exhausted and achy, a marathon he hadn’t run catching up to his body and his mind. Whatever had happened that morning, however that meeting would’ve gone, that was always the point of no return, the aftermath of which would have to include telling everyone what had gone down. There was only so far he could push it before even _he_ couldn’t justify keeping something like this a secret.

_“You’ll tell me about it when you’re ready.”_

The memory springs into Mac’s mind, a clear flash of the day the second letter came. Bozer ran into him in the kitchen where he’d been standing with the envelope in hand, looking at it without opening it like it might contain some sort of biohazardous substance it would be deadly to release into the air. They had looked at each other for several moments, Mac bracing himself for questions he couldn’t - _wouldn’t_ answer, not _yet._ Bozer had given him a critical look, shaken his head, and said, “You’ll tell me about it when you’re ready,” then continued on his initial trajectory to grab his keys off the counter.

That had… not been how Mac was expecting that interaction to go. Instead of questions and accusations of keeping things from everyone again, Bozer had looked at him with more compassion than Mac thinks most people are capable of, and made a guileless proclamation of faith that Mac would come to him when he was willing _and_ able to.

Which is part of why Mac finds himself pulling out his phone now, and picking Bozer out of the limited contents of his address book. If he’s gonna tell them about this, he has to start somewhere, and he’s got the feeling that it would be easier to explain to Jack and Riley if he had Bozer to count on for backup.

As the phone rings, Mac pushes off the wall, pacing through the length of the house in an effort to cast off some of the anxious energy he feels coiled in his muscles. Had he been paying attention, he may have noticed the almost-silent creak of floorboards, the nearly imperceptible shift of air as something moves behind him, keeping to the shadows just out of sight. A heavy metal object is hefted in a gloved hand, ready to be used if Mac should turn around and notice the intruder too soon.

Mac is out onto the back deck when he gets Bozer’s answering message and he remembers why his roommate isn’t home right now in the first place - the movie. Bozer’s still in the movie, and so his phone is off. Having already committed at this point, Mac waits for the mechanical beep, then begins speaking.

“Hey Boze,” he says into the machine, trying to keep his voice light and not too strained. “Sorry I bailed on you guys for the movie. I had a… Listen, there’s something I have to tell you. Something’s been going on, and I’ve been keeping it to myself, but it’s gotten too- I need to tell everyone now, and I need your help to tell Riley and Jack. So-”

Before Mac can finish, or even make it into any of the important details of the letters, the park meeting, or his instinctive misgivings about the whole situation, a sudden, brutal impact catches him across his hand and the side of his face, sending him crumpling to the floor. Blood drips down Mac’s cheek, falling onto the wood of the deck and the pieces of the phone screen, and he tries to breathe through the warningless explosion of pain. The loud rush of white noise in his ears hasn’t yet cleared, screaming nerves in Mac’s face and hand still narrowing his focus away from his surroundings, when another blow catches him in the back of the head and he stops feeling anything at all.

* * *

_Several hours later_

_Phoenix Foundation_

“I feel like we just got sent to the kids’ table,” Riley snaps as the door closes behind them, effectively severing her and Bozer from the conversation about to take place between Jack and Matty. Her worry manifests itself as annoyance at being shunted out of the loop, a complaint about that being easier to vocalize than ‘I think something terrible has happened to Mac, and the fact that Matty won’t let us hear what she knows makes me think it’s worse than I initially thought’.

Bozer seems to be on the same page, as he responds in the same tone, snapping back, “That’s because we just _did_.”

There’s a detached, isolated feeling to being stuck outside in the hall while a very important conversation is carried on where you can see but not hear or participate in it. People pass around them from either side, various employees of the Phoenix that Riley both does and doesn’t recognize. She finds herself glaring at them when she sees them, wondering in what is perhaps a paranoid train of thought what they know that she doesn’t. A sympathetic look, a wince, any reaction at all to the image of the two of them being stuck outside, clearly waiting on a conversation taking place out of earshot that they have some level of investment in, sets off Riley’s existing suspicion.

Are they looking at her like that because they know? Are they involved? Could the people passing by her have information being kept from her? Are they looking at her with pity over her ignorance as she’s kept in the dark?

Realistically, she knows that’s not it. She knows they’re making the faces they’re making because they’ve been where she is, on either the outside or the receiving end of one of Matty’s verdicts or lectures, with untold cost hanging in the balance. Still, in her present circumstances, Riley can’t find it in herself to embrace rationality.

Turning away from the hall, she joins Bozer where he stands watching Matty and Jack.

“They’re talking about Mac, right?” Riley asks, folding her arms and trying to pick out any detail she can to piece together what’s happening. “They’ve gotta be talking about Mac.”

Jack, who hasn’t looked happy with any of this from the get-go, looks now markedly much more unhappy. He’s shaking his head hard, one hand in the air, an unconscious refuting gesture, and though they can’t hear him, it’s obvious he’s speaking loudly. The look on Jack’s face is morphing into one of disbelief and horror, and there’s fire in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Bozer agrees, noticing the same thing. “He’s that worked up? It’s about Mac. They’re probably figuring out exactly what to do now, how to get him back.”

There is, despite being shut out, despite the situation at large, a sense of optimism between Riley and Bozer. There is a problem, yes. It’s a _major_ problem, yes - Mac is missing, he’s hurt, and that noise at the end of the voicemail haunts Riley, sounding in the back of her mind periodically without warning. But if anyone can solve this problem, it’s the combined forces of Matty and Jack. Matty has proven herself a person to be respected and feared, and with Jack’s determination to move heaven and earth to keep Mac safe, Riley has no doubt that together, they’ll get him back in no time.

“What is _taking_ so long.” Bozer’s words burst out of him like he hadn’t meant to speak at all, but rather had a thought so weighted with frustration and other pent up emotion that it burst out of him uninvited. “What is _happening_ in there?”

Bozer has a point. Whatever was so important Matty had to talk to Jack about it alone, it shouldn’t be taking this long. To Riley’s point of view, what is happening in that room has become an argument, and that observation is a bitter chaser to the previous conviction that a cooperative investigation launched by Matty and Jack would have Mac home soon. They don’t look particularly cooperative right now. An assessment of body language doesn’t paint a rosy picture.

There’s a lot of space between Matty and Jack. As the conversation has progressed, Jack has moved away, putting increasing distance between them. His face has devolved further into anger and pain, and it’s chilling for Riley to watch. He paces and glares, at one point turning sharply away from Matty and clasping a palm over his mouth, other hand braced at his hip. Matty, however, doesn’t move much at all. She holds her place and watches Jack, face barely changing from a mask of seriousness, a layer of what looks like heartache beneath it.

The interaction drags on long enough for Bozer and Riley to fall to unnerved silence, trying to piece together what’s going on from only what they can see. Then, it is abruptly ended, when a woman they recognize as Matty’s assistant walks quickly past them and without a pause at what’s going on inside, opens the door and interrupts. Jack is sent out the door much as they had been, leaving after a few moments of animated protest. He pauses just outside until Matty activates the switch that tints the windows, blocking their view inside.

Jack then walks past Riley and Bozer down the hall, without a word to them about what had just transpired, and why they were leaving. Looking at each other, they hurry to follow after him. He doesn’t speak until he gets to the car, turning to the two of them and announcing, in a tone so strained it hardly sounds like him, “We’re on our own.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are some answers in chapter three, i promise! things really pick up from here out. thanks so much for the comments so far, see you next time!
> 
> CHAPTER WARNINGS: brief scene of violence.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all thank you so much for all your continued support and participation with this fic. i couldn't have picked a better show to do this for! sidebar, i'm glad to find out matty's assistant has a canon name, it took me a bit of picking around the internet to find it.
> 
> without further ado, chapter three.

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- "Spent Gladiator 2", The Mountain Goats_

“I did not just hear you say that.”

“Dalton,” Matty starts, only to be cut off before she can continue any further.

“ _No_. I _cannot_ have heard you right, because I know you _didn’t_ just tell me that not only do you know exactly who has Mac, but we’re _not_ going to go _get him back_.” Jack’s voice is swiftly verging on anger, only tempered by the sheer disbelief it holds. He stands facing Matty, a few feet between them, Riley and Bozer all but forgotten out in the hall. There’s a faint roaring in his ears, a white noise that Matty’s voice slices through when she answers.

It isn’t the answer Jack wanted to hear.

“Our orders-”

“ _Bullshit_ our orders, Matty! You can’t look me in the eye and tell me we’re not rescuing him, I- no. No!” Jack is getting more and more agitated. It’s a concept he can’t even really process, the idea of not immediately doing everything in their power to get Mac out of a dangerous situation. A life threatening situation.

“There are people above my head handing down orders I can’t contradict,” Matty says, and Jack is already shaking his head before she’s three words in. “But I’ve been cleared to explain to you what’s going on, in order for you to understand why you need to do as you’re told.”

“Then _explain_ ,” Jack says shortly.

Taking a deep breath, Matty’s face schools itself into a mask of professionalism. When she speaks, she isn’t Matty, isn’t the woman Jack has known for years with a fierce heart and a dedicated protectiveness of those who have become her own. She’s Director Webber, an operative skilled at playing politics and walking the line between being the leader of an agency and a woman with a world of responsibility on her shoulders and powers higher than her to answer to. It’s this part of Matty that Jack has always been the most awed by - almost afraid of. This is the part that balances two different kinds of _has to_ ’s and is sometimes forced to make the call to sacrifice one for the other.

“I didn’t say we knew exactly who had him. I don’t have a name, I don’t have a location, but I know it’s the Organization.”

The name of the group that has caused so much of the trouble plaguing their lives over the last several months sends a chill down Jack’s spine, though it’s not like he isn’t expecting it. The Organization had been one of his first thoughts when he got Riley’s call. What she says next, though, that he isn’t expecting.

“I was told about MacGyver’s abduction by an agent of ours who has managed to get inside the Organization.”

“You were _told_.” Jack’s resolution not to interrupt doesn’t last long, but he can’t help it. “You _knew_ and you didn’t _tell me_?”

“I was about to when I got _your_ call,” Matty explains patiently, the veneer of Director Webber not cracking under Jack’s accusations. Much as he feels embarrassed and remorseful a moment later, he can’t really bring himself to apologize. Not right now. “As I was _saying_ , we were informed by our agent on the inside who heard the plan discussed as it was being executed. If we move, if we act on this information, we tip our whole hand. The only advantage we have over the Organization right now is they think _we think_ it’s over. That we don’t know about the infiltration.”

“But we already caught Thornton? They know we caught Thornton.” Jack gets the distinct feeling that there’s a piece of the puzzle missing from his view of it.

“Apparently,” Matty says, and a split in the mask appears, bitterness seeping through, “she wasn’t the only one. There’s more, we don’t know how many or how deep they go. We just know they’re there, and we’re gathering more information as quickly as we can. We’re proceeding delicately, though, because like I said, our only advantage is they don’t know we’re onto them.”

It’s one more distasteful piece of news piled onto one hell of an unpleasant day, and it’s the last thing Jack wanted to hear. Or, well, second to the last thing. He’s already heard the last thing, and it’s this incomprehensible order he circles back to now, redirecting away from the Organization to his priority - Mac. Mac, who is missing, who has been taken by the Organization. Who Jack has been told that he can’t help. That no one can help.

“And why does that mean I can’t rescue my kidnapped partner?” The new information is beginning to paint a picture for Jack, but he can’t figure out how the conclusion of that picture is _this_ , is the one order he’d never expected to get. He knows his voice is rising in volume, that he’s inches from yelling at his own boss, but that doesn’t seem entirely important now. Matty, true to form, responds in kind, own voice raising while maintaining her even, strong tone.

“Because we got this information from our agent, and if we act on it we not only give her away as one of a small number of people with access to that knowledge, we give away our only advantage, that we know there are Organization operatives still here. We blow our entire investigation, and we can’t risk that.”

It’s an assertion that makes Jack’s blood run cold then hot, horror and anger swapping each other out too fast for him to keep up with.

“We can’t risk the _investigation_ ,” he says slowly, unconsciously taking a step back, “but they’re just fine with us risking Mac’s _life_?”

Had he not known her the way he did, as long as he had, Jack may have missed the slight slump in her shoulders, the way Matty’s face changes. She doesn’t like what she’s about to say, and it’s clear in everything from the thin line of her mouth before she speaks, to the words she chooses when she does.

“My superiors,” Matty starts delicately, an immediate distancing phrase that separates her from a decision she very clearly doesn’t like, “have decided that, given his history and his… talents, that MacGyver is well capable of…” She stops, giving a slight shake of her head and a taking a measured breath before she finishes. “Of getting himself out of this predicament without backup.”

 _“Getting himself out of_ \- And people _wonder_ where he gets the idea that he can- he _has_ to do everything himself. Matty!”

“I know.” Despite the fact that she must have seen it - she’s looking right at him - Matty doesn’t respond to the way Jack turns away from her. She doesn’t react to his hands, raking roughly over his hair and landing braced at his hips, a physical manifestation of how Jack feels at hearing that the people in charge of making the big decisions have decided that it’s Mac’s responsibility to save his own life. Save his own life, _alone_.

“I didn’t agree with _any_ part of that decision,” Matty continues, clarifying even further her role in what she’s telling him he has to do. “You know how I feel about improvising, about his methods. I’ve made my peace with his conduct in the field because he has demonstrated he is able to handle unexpected situations and come out the other end alive. But this… Expecting him to use those capabilities to- It’s unconscionable. I would _never_ agree to leave MacGyver in a situation like that. But I’m afraid I have no choice, and my hands are tied.” A pause. “As are yours.”

Now, Jack turns back around.

“No,” he says forcefully, reiterating his point from the beginning of this whole argument. “No. I’m not leaving him.”

“Trust me, there is nothing I want to do more right now than to give you all the information I have and green-light you to track down the bastards who took him and tear them apart with your bare hands. Hell, I’d like to _help.”_

There’s a brief moment where Jack has hope. He hears the truth in her words, the way Matty _means_ what she’s saying, and hopes this is the lead-in to ‘and so we’re gonna ignore the instructions of my bosses and we’re gonna use every considerable resource and ally at our disposal to get him back in one piece’. He should’ve known better, and before she even continues, he knows what she’s going to say.

“But I can’t. And you can’t.”

“So, what? We leave him to save himself or die?” Jack’s voice cracks on the last word, heart pounding palpably in his chest.

“Jack.” The use of his first name and the almost hesitant way she says it snaps his mouth shut despite that not being the end of what he had to say about _that_ plan. “They abducted him from his house. There was an elaborate plan in place to do so that involved an attempt to lure him to a secondary location and plant a false lead. They wanted him alive.”

“And now he’s running out of time,” Jack counters. “The longer we stand here arguing about this, the more dangerous it gets for him!”

If Matty had seemed reluctant to say something before, she was doubly so now. She shifts slightly, and though her expression overall stays the same, the current underneath it changes. Matty has always been skilled in feeling a lot of different things but showing very little, if any, of it. Jack can’t tell if he’s getting glimpses now because she’s letting him, or if she’s lost an inch of the meticulous image she’s so good at keeping under control.

“If they were going to kill him,” she says, picking through her words like she doesn’t know which are safe and which are poisoned. “If _that_ \- if killing MacGyver was _why_ they took him, or an immediate goal, realistically speaking, they have already done it. If the _intent_ of this situation ended in his death, he’s already dead.”

Jack feels like he’s been shot. The air leaves his lungs in a silent vacuum, and it’s a miracle he stays standing. _He’s already dead_. The words hit him over and over, each time as hard as the first. _He’s already dead. He’s already dead._

“If that _wasn’t_ the goal - and all indication points that it _wasn’t_ \- if what they want is information, or his skills, then he has time. Enough time to get himself out.”

Through a haze of ‘he’s already dead he’s already dead hesalreadydead’, Jack finds something in Matty’s words to latch onto that isn’t the mental image of Mac’s blond hair a red-soaked halo to a pale face punctuated by a bullet.

“That’s my _point_ , Matty. He doesn’t have to get himself out. That’s what he’s got me for.”

Matty gives a short, sharp shake of her head. “No person involved with this agency can step in to help MacGyver this time.”

“Matty-”

“ _No one_ who is _involved with this agency_ can-”

“Then I’ll quit.” The threat comes out of nowhere, and Jack means it with a level of deadly seriousness he hopes he conveys as he looks Matty directly in the eye. “If nobody with the Phoenix can help Mac, then I’ll leave the Phoenix. I don’t care. I’ll quit before I leave him out there alone, before I let him down like that. Before I _abandon_ him. I won’t do it.”

“You’re not understanding me,” Matty insists, and Jack frowns at her.

What she’s saying isn’t making any sense. He’s hearing her just fine, he just disagrees with what she’s saying, and she isn’t usually the kind of person to mince words and say things she doesn’t mean. Matty doesn’t ignore reality to fit her own narrative - if she really thought he wasn’t understanding what she’s saying, that’s the accusation she would make. That’s the accusation she _is_ making, but it’s clear he does understand, so what gives?

“Listen,” she says slowly, “to the words I’m saying. _No one_ who is _affiliated with this agency_ can go after him.”

And suddenly, just like that, it clicks. As if a light switch has been flicked on and a darkened room thrown into sharp relief, Jack understands what Matty is trying to say to him. What she’s telling him to do.

Jack is the kind of person who has always made friends easily, accumulating allies quickly and maintaining relationships across continents. Far, _far_ from all of those people are currently involved with the Phoenix Foundation. People ‘affiliated with this agency’ are not the only resource Jack has to draw on.

Slowly, beginning to unravel what lay beneath the intonation and insistence of her words, Jack nods. He looks Matty dead on and nods, hoping that she means what he thinks she does.

“Nobody who works for the Phoenix Foundation,” she repeats again, dispelling any lingering doubt, “can investigate MacGyver’s disappearance. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Am I making myself _clear_?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jack says, neither of them addressing the formality Matty has always hated, this being far from the time to quibble over forms of address. “Crystal.”

There are a few moments of quiet in the room while Jack and Matty look away from one another and Jack tries to wrap his mind around what he’s going to have to do. Through the wall of the conference room, the glass offering a clear view, he sees Bozer and Riley, wearing twin looks of anxiety and frustration. He breathes deeply a few times, measured inhale-exhales that do very little to calm him.

“This is…” His voice is quiet now. Quiet and tired, heavy with weight of even the _idea_ of what’s coming next. What the next hours, god forbid the next _days_ are going to look like. “We’ve been through a lot together, you and me. Seen a lot, survived a lot, but I just can’t… Matty, this the worst thing you’ve ever done to me. Everything that’s happened before, everything with the Phoenix, all of the missions- _this_ is the worst thing you’ve _ever_ asked me to do.”

“I know,” Matty agrees softly. Her voice has pitched to match his, this moving from an argument between director and agent to a baring of wounds between friends.

Before any more can be said, the door opens, and someone walks in. It’s Matty’s assistant, Andie Lee, and Jack’s half-open mouth shuts. Clearly the woman does not have her boss’s gift with poker faces, and her grim expression sends a jolt of ice-cold right into the already erratically jumping muscle of Jack’s heart.

“You can go now, Dalton,” Matty dismisses without looking at him, still scrutinizing Andie’s face.

“If this is about Mac, I can’t-”

“It’s not about Mac,” Matty interrupts, confirmed by a slight nod from the bearer of the next piece of bad news. Andie has stayed in the doorway, electronic tablet clasped between her hands, staying out of the way of the tail end of what had obviously been a heated confrontation between her boss and Jack.

“This isn’t over yet. We’re not done talking.”

“Yes we are.” Now, Matty does look away, back to him, her gaze steely and insistence firm. “You’re dismissed. Go _home_. When there is news about MacGyver, I will call you myself.”

There are a few moments where it seems like Jack might continue to fight back, might drag the argument down into yet another revolution of the same circular pattern they’ve been following since it began. He doesn’t know himself whether he’s going to or not, right until the moment that he doesn’t. Jack dips his chin curtly, and moves to leave.

“Jack.”

He turns to look at her, hand already on the door. It’s the softness in Matty’s voice that makes him pause, listen to what she says despite the spike of frustration at her first ordering him to leave then calling him back at the last moment.

“I’m sorry, I really mean that. I know how you feel about him, how we all feel about him. I know how hard this is on you. He’s going to make it. If anybody can it’s him.”

Instead of answering, Jack just shakes his head and leaves, letting the door slam shut behind him. He pauses for a moment just outside, hoping the strangled feeling in his throat and the heat behind his eyes will abate before he has to talk to Riley and Bozer, explain to them the catch twenty-two they’ve found themselves ensnared in.

In his pause, eyes drifting back inside the room he’s just been kicked out of, Jack catches sight of Matty’s assistant, instinct interpreting the shape of Andie’s mouth as it moves to form the words she’s saying. Before Matty notices and quickly tints the windows, obscuring his view, Jack makes out clearly three words, the last words he was expecting to see put together in any kind of sentence.

“Patricia Thornton” and “escape”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: none i can think of!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so here's where we get a cameo from an old friend of jack's, and the introduction of our borrowed characters who are gonna help carry the plot while our heroes here are stuck at home. like i mentioned in the notes on the first chapter, this isn't really a crossover, i'm just borrowing some characters to help with the legwork instead of making up oc's. no familiarity with or investment in anything aside from macgyver is needed! 
> 
> again, thank you so much for your wonderful comments, and i hope you enjoy the new chapter! first night of passover is friday, i'm really excited. so for those of you who may celebrate, have a lovely seder!

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- "Spent Gladiator 2", The Mountain Goats_

_“_ What do you _mean_ , ‘we’re on our own’?” It's Riley who finds the wherewithal to speak first.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, Jack takes in his younger teammates. They’ve once again found themselves in the backseat together while he drives, guiding the car around the Foundation parking lot and out onto the road, not answering immediately.

For the life of him, Jack doesn’t know what to tell them. His mind is jumbled and racing, trying to come up with a way to explain this. It’s hard when it still hasn’t really sunk in for him to begin with. Which is what brings him to the request he makes of Riley and Bozer. He cringes in anticipation of making it, but much as they aren’t going to like it, Jack needs some time to get his head screwed on right before they discuss next steps.

So he asks for the drive. Jack asks for the drive home as time to think, time to sort through the conversation he’s just had with Matty and come to some sense of equilibrium within himself before he fills them in. Bozer looks like he’s about to argue, the first sounds of words forming in his mouth, when Riley elbows him and shakes her head.

“Okay,” she says, taking Jack by surprise with her quick acquiescence. “Take the drive.”

So they drive home in silence. The air is uncomfortable and stiff. Riley and Bozer don’t talk to him but they don’t talk to each other either, despite Jack making no request for quiet. The uneasy foreboding hanging over all three of them is enough to keep them so, tense anxiety stifling voices in throats. All the while, Jack’s mind churns, producing image after image he doesn’t want to see.

Through a variety of means - witnessing it, experiencing it, reading about it in reports, Jack is familiar with the kinds of terrible things human beings are capable of doing to each other. He knows what can happen to a person in the hands of someone who wants to hurt them, has seen these things happen to Mac before. The difference is, when those awful things had happened, they’d been together. Jack had either been with Mac when it happened, or found him very quickly afterwards. He’d been able to help.

This time, though… Jack’s knuckles creak against the strain of how hard he’s gripping the steering wheel, a scenario imposing itself on his mind. What could happen over the course of however long it takes to get Mac back.

They’re going to hurt him. That isn’t even a question. The people who took Mac are going to hurt him, probably severely. They’ve already done it, the lingering image of blood on broken shards of phone screen glass jumping again to the forefront of Jack’s thoughts. By the time Mac gets away, devises a plan that doesn’t hinge on the lasting foregone conclusion that when he was in trouble, Jack would be on his way immediately, and enacts it, he’s going to be badly injured. So he’ll limp home alone, having reinforced the higher ups’ decision to force him to pull himself out on his own by succeeding in exactly what they wanted from him. And when he got home, when he fell through the doorway and found out _why_ the rescue he had every reason to expect was coming never showed up…

It’s bad enough to imagine the abandoned, betrayed look in Mac’s eyes when he’s told that they were given orders and then _followed_ those orders no matter how, as Matty had called them, unconscionable they were. But much as that thought hurt, much as it stabbed barbed hooks into Jack’s heart and left them there, pulsing and aching, there’s another, worse thought that immediately superimposes itself over the first, and that is the thought that Mac would look at the orders to leave him behind and agree.

Jack can see Mac’s face now, a flash of pain brought on by that sense of abandonment, of being left behind, quickly replaced by acceptance. By a nod and an ‘I understand’. It’s what Mac himself would’ve told them to do.

_If it will risk anyone else’s life, if it would jeopardize a mission or an investigation this important, don’t come after me. Leave me there. I’ll find my own way out. I’ll be okay. Don’t risk that for me._

It’s exactly what Mac would tell them to do, and Jack hates that he knows that so certainly. There are few things in life that scare him like knowing that Mac’s idea of a minimal loss scenario encompasses ‘everyone lives but me’. It’s terrifying to Jack, makes what’s housed within his ribcage feel like a bruised, pulverized mess, that Mac can’t seem to find a place for his own life on his list of priorities. It’s made him a great agent but the kind of person destined to die young, and die violently. Jack has done - _is doing_ everything in his power to keep that from happening, to instill some kind of self-preservation in the stupid kid, but this… This won’t help, and Jack doesn’t need another setback in his long-game objective of convincing Mac that his life has worth on its own.

Jack can’t help but picture where this goes next. He can see how it plays out the next time a related situation occurs - how Mac will point out that he made it out fine last time. That everything turned out okay. He’ll charge into it head first and he’ll make it back out that time, but what about the next? And the next time after that? No one is invincible and Jack, as evidenced, isn’t always going to be there to keep Mac in one piece. And every time he does get out, every time he escapes death, he’ll be that much looser with his grip on life.

That is, of course, assuming Mac gets out of _this_ alive. Matty made a good point about the Organization wanting Mac alive for a reason, but Jack still has the sinking feeling that time is running out. Time could run out, something could go wrong, an interrogation could get out of hand, and it’s that thought ringing in Jack’s mind when he pulls into the driveway. The mental image of Mac’s crumpled, bloodied body dumped on the porch, or in some forgotten ditch somewhere is one that’s going to stick, a nauseating thought Jack doesn’t know if he’ll be rid of until Mac is back where he can see and hear and touch him.

It’s hard to tell what’s worse. The idea of standing in a county morgue, fulfilling his last duty as Mac’s next-of-kin by identifying his body, or the idea of just never seeing him again, of two days ago at work being the last time he ever spoke to Mac. He doesn’t think he’d ever be able to stop looking, and the pain of not knowing would eat away at him for the rest of his life.

Then again, Jack has already been in the first position. He’s been called to a morgue to identify Mac’s body before. It had been a mistake, a young man of the right age and physical characteristics, the same kind of Swiss Army knife in his pocket. Mac had been missing, the body had turned up, it had been too easy to connect those details and land Jack standing in a freezing room with a hammering heart. It hadn’t been him, obviously, and he’d had shown up the next day, bruised and exhausted from having walked along a deserted highway all night. That feeling had been one Jack couldn’t shake, though, and he’d grabbed Mac the moment he’d seen him, hugged him tight enough that he could feel Mac’s breathing.

“I went to identify your body yesterday,” is what he’d said, when Mac’s confused voice had asked from the vicinity of his shoulder what was wrong.

_I’ve done this once, Mac, please don’t make me do it again._

The sound of the back doors of the car opening and closing, Riley and Bozer’s footsteps on gravel, reminds Jack that he has another, extremely immediate problem. He has no idea how he’s going to convince these two that they are going to sit frozen and wait for someone else to find Mac, that there is any way in hell _not_ going after him is a plan they could live with when Jack doesn’t hardly believe it himself. That isn’t even touching the new element that’s been introduced now, the left-field pitch that was Patricia Thornton and whether her escape is connected to what’s happened to Mac. Not having any idea at all how to rationalize Thornton’s presence in this situation, Jack shelves that for a moment. At least until he can get over the first terrible thing he has to tell Riley and Bozer. If they’re even speaking to him after this, then, then he can think about how to tell them about Thornton.

Taking a deep breath to steel his nerves, Jack gets out of the car and follows where they’d disappeared into the house. He’s grateful for the few moments he spends alone on the walk inside. With no one’s eyes on him, no one expecting him to follow or give orders, hear or provide answers, it’s the last moment of respite he thinks he’s going to get for quite some time. At least until Mac is home, safe and sound.

“It’s the Organization,” Jack says when he finally stands in front of Riley and Bozer, who have been patient to a herculean extent waiting for him to get his thoughts in order and his mind to stop screaming long enough for him to figure out what to say. “They’re the ones who took Mac and we… We can’t go after him.”

“Bullshit.” Riley’s immediate response mirrors what he’d said to Matty, and under different circumstances, Jack would’ve laughed.

“What does that even _mean_?” is Bozer’s contribution.

Over the next couple of minutes, Jack does his best to explain Matty’s instructions, why she’d been given the orders she had, why she’d passed them on. It’s now that he finally understands why Matty had insisted on speaking to him one-on-one first. Though there’s a part of him that resents her for making him be the bearer of this news, he understands now. With how hard it is to tell them, they’d never have accepted it from Matty. If there’s even a chance of the plan he can just barely feel forming going through, he needs Riley and Bozer on board.

So far, though, no luck.

“We can’t just _leave_ him out there alone, Jack, no way in hell!” Riley’s voice is passionate and climbing in both volume and pitch as her frustration and upset with the situation boils over. Bozer can’t even seem to form his objections coherently, sputtering through a few attempts before letting Riley’s words carry them both, staring at Jack with complete incomprehension.

Something about being on the other side of this argument sticks wrong in Jack’s brain, his entire mind reeling at the thought that someone might think he would disagree with that assertion.

“Of course not. Of _course_ we can’t just _leave_ him. We’re not _going_ to.” Jack’s voice is just this side of a snap, having maintained enough awareness of things outside his own turmoil to refrain from yelling at Riley and Bozer, who are just as scared for Mac as he is.

“Then what are we going to do?” Riley demands. Her arms are folded tight to her body and she’s standing close to Bozer, who still can’t seem to find his voice.

“Matty told me to call in help.”

Riley blinks. “She told you to call in help.”

“Not in so many words.” Seeing that she’s about to say something again, face twisted in doubt, Jack holds up a hand, forestalling her. “I’ve known her for a long time. I knew what she was telling me to do. Trust me, Matty gave me an instruction, she just had to have plausible deniability. So what we’re gonna do, since nobody at the Phoenix Foundation can help, is go outside the Foundation.”

“To who?”

“To anyone we can. Which is what we need to do now. Think of anyone you know who could help, anyone who owes you. Favors, debts, _anybody_ you can think of, it’s time to call them now.” As far as rousing speeches go, it’s not the best one Jack’s ever given, but under the circumstances, it does the job.

There’s faith in the way they’re looking at him now, and Jack can feel the weight of that faith resting on his shoulders, a burden he wouldn’t shed for anything but sometimes finds hard to carry nonetheless. He nods, twice, and swallows hard.

“So just… Think on that and call who you can. I’m gonna go make a call of my own.”

Riley watches Jack’s retreating back until he’s disappeared down the hall and out of sight. She’s standing close enough to Bozer that when he moves, she feels it before she sees it. A whoosh of air, the brush of the sleeve of his hoodie, and, a moment later, his muttered words.

“I need some air.”

For a moment she stands and watches him go, panic making her fingers tingle, pins and needles creeping through her hands. It’s a physical feeling to match the nerves that have been going haywire all day, since first hearing that interrupted voicemail. Riley gives herself those brief moments to feel that panic, let it wash over her. Her eyes prickle with heat, her throat feels tight, and her breath hitches. Then, her moment is over, and she shakes herself, coughs, and scrubs her hands over her eyes, wiping the tears away before they can fall. Riley follows Bozer outside, hoping some moving air will help calm her too.

Just as she reaches the back porch, walking out of the house, Riley hears a low crunch. It sounds like the muffled report of a boot going through ice, except where you’d find ice in the middle of the day in Los Angeles is a mystery to her. She looks down to locate the source of the noise and sees the pieces of Mac’s phone. That’s what Bozer had stepped on. Riley watches him as he abruptly whips around and walks back into the house, reemerging just as quickly with a dish towel. He kneels down and starts picking up the pieces, dropping them one by one into the towel.

From where she stands a couple feet away, Riley can’t see the look on Bozer’s face, so she crouches down, peering at him. His eyes are red and too bright. He stops, wiping a sleeve of his jacket across his face and glancing briefly over at Riley before looking back down and continuing to clean up the broken phone with shaking fingers.

“I should’ve made him come to the damn movie.” Bozer is still focused on the glass as he speaks. “If I’d pushed harder, if I’d got him to come with us, then he wouldn’t have been… He’d be fine. He’d be here.”

Spotting a piece of the phone casing next to her boot, Riley picks it up, reaching out to drop it into the dish towel with the rest.

“It wouldn’t’ve made a difference,” she counters quietly. “Be realistic, Boze. They put thought into this. Work. If it wasn’t today, it would’ve been tomorrow, or the next day.”

Bozer’s hands still, and he gives a short sigh. “I know. But having something to blame, something to point to and say _this is why it happened_ , it…”

“It makes it easier,” Riley agrees, nodding. “I get it. But it wasn’t your fault.” She looks around, searching for any pieces of the phone they might have missed, when something catches her eye. Getting up and walking over to it, she picks up the tiny piece of metal and plastic.

“What is it?”

“I think it’s the SIM card from Mac’s phone. I’ll keep it, maybe we’ll get something useful off it.” At the prospect of something technological she might be able to do, some way she could possibly help, Riley finally feels the panic and fear start to slip away, replaced by something else. Determination.

* * *

 With a ringing phone held up to his ear, Jack paces restlessly up and down the hallway. It feels like it’s been ringing forever, though he knows it’s only been a few moments. The line clicks after the second ring-through, and a brisk voice answers.

“Steve McGarrett, who’s this?”

“Steve, man, it’s Jack Dalton.” The question of why Steve didn’t just check caller ID is moot - the man goes through a couple cellphones a year, and it’s been a while since Jack called. His number wouldn’t’ve been in the address book.

“It’s been a while, how’ve you been? Are you alright? You sound kinda weird.”

Shaking his head, though he knows Steve can’t see him, Jack sighs. “No. No, not really. It’s about MacGyver. Angus MacGyver.”

“MacGyver, that’s that kid of yours, right? Super genius?” Steve almost sounds like he’s laughing. “The one you dropped by with when me and Danny were out of town?”

“Yeah,” Jack confirms with the ghost of a smile. “Well, one of ‘em.”

“You ever gonna bring him around when I’m actually here? I’ve heard a lot, I’d like to meet him. Y’know. If you’re ever in the neighborhood.”

It would be nice to let himself be reassured by the easy way Steve and he have always been able to pick back up like the last time they talked was yesterday, not months ago. But there’s way too much going on for that, and Jack pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Steve, Mac’s missing. Someone took him from his house this morning.”

“Oh. Shit.” Suddenly, McGarrett’s voice lacks any trace of its previous levity. “Why’re you calling me about it? Do you think he ended up here? In Hawai’i?”

“No, it’s- I need your help. There’s politics and red tape, and my boss is under pressure from people above her head. I’ve been ordered to stand down. We’re all hamstrung, we can’t help him. Everyone who works with us is restricted from even looking.”

A low whistle sounds down the line. “God, that’s brutal.”

“Yeah. So my boss, Matty, she told me to go outside the Phoenix for help. Had to talk around it, but that’s what she told me to do. So I’m calling you. My boy’s missing and I need your help, Steve, I got no idea what’s happening to him, and it’s killing me. He needs help. I can’t do it myself this time, that’s why I need you. You’re the first person I thought of.”

A beat of silence while Steve processes what Jack’s told him.

“Listen, Jack, I want to help. But I’m concerned I might be too far away. I’d get on a plane right now if I thought it would be fast enough, but by the time I got there-”

“He’d have been gone for a full day,” Jack finishes, nodding and barely reigning in the urge to kick the baseboard of the wall in frustration.

“But I’m gonna give you the number of a buddy of mine, and if you call him, he’ll be able to help you. He lives in town, works there too. If I were in LA, and I was in trouble, he’s the first guy I would go to.”

“And this friend, you’d trust him with your life?”

“In a heartbeat.”

Something in Jack can’t let it drop there, impulsively asking, “What about your partner’s life? Or your kid’s? Would you put your kid’s life in this guy’s hands?”

Steve doesn’t point out the implication of that question, instead answering very seriously, “Yes, I would, if I had one. Now? I’d trust him with my partner’s kid, and I can’t say that about many people.”

There’s a few moments of empty quiet, stretching out over Southern California and Hawai’i alike.

“Alright.” Jack nods. “Give me his number.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter specific warnings: none i can think of!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy easter to those who celebrate, and happy passover to those who celebrate THAT! 
> 
> this is..... later in the day than i like to post but this was a troublesome chapter. thanks again so much for your lovely comments, and i hope you'll continue to let me know your thoughts and feelings about the story!

>   _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- "Spent Gladiator 2", The Mountain Goats_

Jack knows there’s a slim margin of time within which to get going before any trail the Organization left when they took Mac disappears, so he doesn’t waste much on staring at the piece of paper he wrote the information on.

 _Sam Hanna, NCIS_ it says in a shakier, less legible than usual version of his handwriting. Then the phone number.

He dials it, checking twice to make sure he’s got the numbers right, then listens for the answer. As the line rings and rings, Jack is provided with more opportunity than he’d really like to have to consider the fact that he’s about to ask a perfect stranger for help doing a job that’s always been _his_ responsibility. He would really prefer if it was Steve helping him do this, if it was someone he _knew_ that he was about to entrust with finding Mac. But Steve had been right. The distance between Hawai’i and Los Angeles was too great for it to be crossed in time to get to Mac before it was too late - across town was far enough. And Steve had given his word about this man. If Steve gave his word about someone, if Steve was willing to vouch as much as he had for him, then that person had to be reliable and trustworthy.

Just as he has that thought, the other end of the line clicks, and a voice says into Jack’s ear, “Hello?”

“Is this Sam Hanna?” Jack asks. “With NCIS?”

There’s a pause, and Jack supposes that’s fair. It’s an unsettling thing when an unknown number calls and the person on the other end knows your name. The number Steve gave him was Sam’s personal cell, rather than his office line, and Jack can imagine how that might set him on edge.

“Who’s asking?” The man’s voice is guarded and on edge. Jack figures he may as well get right to the point with the reason he’s called.

“My name is Jack Dalton. I’m an old friend of Steve McGarrett’s. I’m in a hell of a situation right now, and he gave me your number, told me to call you.” It’s all Jack can hope that Sam is going to believe him, that he’ll be willing to help once the situation is explained.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth about knowing Steve?” Sam asks.

“I mean, you could hang up and ask him yourself, but I would appreciate it if you heard me out. He told me to tell you that this is him calling in his chip.”

Another pause, this time longer. Steve hadn’t explained what that meant, ‘calling in his chip’. Jack could only assume it would signal that things were serious enough that he should listen, that this was important enough for Steve to by-proxy remind Sam of some major good deed he’d done. Whatever had happened, that phrase, it was supposed to help convince Sam of something.

“Alright, I’m listening.”

Sam’s allowance undoes the tight knot in Jack’s chest, and the resulting wave of relief is almost painful. He starts talking and once he starts he can’t seem to find the strength to stop, and the whole story seems to have told itself by the time he stops to take a breath.

“And there was a voicemail?” The questions Sam has begun to ask don’t sound suspicious any longer. They’ve taken on the tone of an investigator beginning to build a case.

“Left on his roommate’s phone this morning.” It’s a hard-fought battle to keep the memory of that message in check, to retain the factual information of what happened but stamp the visceral reaction it had yanked out of him that first time. That’s not going to help him now.

“And your boss, Webber, she made your team leave the room when she told you what she knew.” The suspicion has returned somewhat, aimed in a different direction. It’s not a direction Jack likes.

“Yeah, she did,” he says slowly, wondering what Sam is getting at.

“Why?”

The question throws Jack for a loop.

“I…”

“Did she tell you why she made them leave, and just told _you_?”

Jack lets the silence grow and stretch while he thinks back and runs through that awful conversation. “No,” he says finally. “She didn’t.”

“Huh. Alright. And then these letters.”

The conversation continues on like that, Sam asking questions and Jack answering when he can. He can’t always see why Sam asks what he does, how it connects with the rest of his questions, but that’s less disconcerting than the ones he can’t answer at all. Those leave him with an eerie, cold feeling that he tries to shove down. Focus on the facts. Focus on telling Sam everything he can so someone might finally, _finally_ be able to start _looking_ for Mac.

“You’re jumping through a lot of hoops to help this kid.” The observation throws Jack off, and he pulls a face the man on the other end of the line can’t see.

“Yeah,” he says shortly. “I am.” The words are curt and offer no explanation, which, for the moment at least, Sam accepts.

“So,” Jack finishes when no more questions seem to be forthcoming. He leans against the wall and looks off down the hall at nothing in particular, and pictures Mac standing here this morning. He can imagine it now, Mac staring aimlessly at the same spot of unremarkable paint, exhausted and struggling to find it in him to tell them about the letters. “Will you help us?” The answer comes quicker than Jack was expecting it to.

“Yeah. My partner and I will be on our way over, text me the address.”

“Thank you.” Jack closes his eyes and shakes his head. He presses his free hand over his closed eyes and takes a tremulous breath, trying to contain the burning feeling. “Thank you.” The words are fierce and fervent, and before Jack can do anything ridiculous, like lose his composure entirely over the unfairness, the agony of this whole situation, he drops the phone from his ear and hangs up.

A quick text gives Sam the address, and Jack pushes off the wall. Time to tell Riley and Bozer about the update to their patchwork rescue team.

Across the city, in the NCIS Office of Special Projects, Sam Hanna sets his phone down, only to look up and meet the raised-eyebrows gaze of his partner, G Callen, who has just overheard his half of a conversation with a strange man named Jack Dalton.

“What did you just sign me up for?” G asks, and Sam wordlessly shakes his head. He’s still not entirely sure, but whatever is going on, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be good.

* * *

With all the glass having been picked up off the wood slats, and the dish towel used to wipe the remaining blood - thankfully not much - up as well, it takes more restraint than it usually does to refrain from taking the kitchen trash out immediately. The sense of immediacy that had spurred the cleaning to begin with hasn’t left. Bozer wants the remnants of the phone out of there, wants them out of his sight, out of his house. He doesn’t want to be confronted with the proof of what had happened earlier. Carrying the knowledge that someone had come into their house and hurt Mac was bad enough without looking at the blood on the ground.

Not to mention what the hell could’ve been used to do that kind of damage, what sort of process began who knew how and ended with both a broken phone and broken skin. The thought of someone hitting the phone out of Mac’s hand with a bat or a crowbar while he was speaking into it, no regard for catching him across the face in the process, is a thought Bozer doesn’t want to entertain, yet can’t stop picturing, the image producing itself over and over in a myriad of configurations.

On top of the existing unfairness of it happening at all, Bozer can’t help but feel a twinge of bitter anger at the timing. Mac had been about to ask for help. Had been leaving a message on Bozer’s voicemail _asking for help_. And he’d been attacked while doing that. Bozer can’t help but fear the sort of message that’s going to send. Once bitten, ten times shy, that was Mac when it came to opening up.

Shaking his head like his mind is an etch-a-sketch and he can clear the horrifying images, Bozer looks inside to where he can just barely see Jack wandering into his line of sight. He seems to have finished his phone call, standing with his cell hanging forgotten in his hand, stopped just in the threshold of the living room. Jack looks like he’d been in the process of coming out to update them but stopped halfway through, and Bozer can just barely make out details of the look on his face with the distance separating him.

Jack is a cheerful person. He’s warm-hearted and excited about many things in life, and Bozer has always appreciated this about him. Right now he just looks… bleak. Exhausted and bleak, like he’s staring in the face a prospect he can’t even comprehend let alone rationalize. Bozer thinks that he can relate. He feels about the same, right now.

“Who do you suppose he called?” Bozer is asking the question before he consciously decides to ask it. He’s always been a nervous talker, for all that he’s been struck silent several times in the last several hours, and saying it out loud makes him feel a little better. A fear spoken is a fear that can be killed. If it stays inside your head, you can only make it stronger through your own contemplation of it.

Riley shrugs. “I don’t know. Can’t be anyone we’ve met. He said nobody with the Phoenix can help, so it must be someone he met somewhere else.”

With a frustrated sigh, Bozer shakes his head. “I feel like the more we know the less we _know_. Y’know?”

“Yeah. Me too.”

It’s at least a full minute before the back door opens and Jack comes out onto the deck. He looks like himself again now, his face schooled into the look Bozer has internally dubbed ‘Mission Jack’. This is the face that usually means things are absolutely screwed to hell, but it would all be okay, because Jack would make it okay or die trying. And so far, it’s all been category one. So Bozer is hopeful. Until Jack starts to explain.

“So, wait, how do you know this guy?”

Riley and Bozer are sitting on deck chairs out on the back porch, facing Jack who’s just said a name neither of them recognized. Riley is the one who asked the question, Bozer still paging back through the years he’s known Jack, trying to figure out if ‘Sam Hanna’ is a name that’s ever come up before.

“You remember Kono and Chin, right? From Hawai’i? They work with a friend of mine.”

“Steve McGarrett,” Bozer fills in. He’s always been good with names and faces, and despite not actually having met the man, this one supplies itself easily. “He was out of town when we were there. I remember you talking to them about him.”

Jack nods. “Exactly. Well, Sam is an old friend of his, knew him when they were both SEALs. Sam works with NCIS now, and his office is in LA. He and his partner, something-Callen, I didn’t catch his first name, they’re on their way. Steve swears Sam is the right person to call, that he’ll help us. He speaks highly of Callen too. They’re good people.”

Bozer supposes that’s intended to be reassuring. He doesn’t particularly find it so.

Half an hour later, tires in the driveway signal the arrival of the cavalry. The men walking towards the front door certainly look like special agents to Bozer’s eyes, and it does a marginal degree of good to the doubt hovering in his mind.  Not much, and Bozer still wishes it was Jack who was going to go out there and rescue Mac himself, but with that option off the table, some intimidating Navy SEAL friend-of-a-friend and his partner at a federal agency were going to have to do.

While Jack opens the door to greet their unfamiliar new allies, Bozer hangs back with Riley, watching him shake their hands and smile grimly, thanking them for coming.

“This is Riley and Bozer, they’re with our team,” Jack says, gesturing to them as he leads the two newcomers fully into the house.

“Sam Hanna,” the taller of the two says in introduction. The one who hangs further back, partially behind his partner, steps forward then, putting his face into full view.

“G Callen,” he says of himself, and Bozer is about to ask him if the G stands for anything or if it’s just ‘G’, when the man moves on past him, walking directly into the living room. Bozer watches him go, bewildered by just about everything that’s happening in his house right now. Sam follows, Jack joining them, until the three of them stand together in the living room.

“Does that security cam up front work?” asks G. He doesn’t look at anyone in particular when he says it, busy peering around at the house.

“Oh. _Oh_.” Bozer can’t believe he hadn’t thought of that before now. “Yeah. Mac makes sure they’re running.”

“I can look over the tapes,” Riley volunteers. Bozer glances over at her. She seems almost excited about finally having something she can do, some way to be useful.

“Why don’t you two go start combing through the footage from this morning. Maybe go back a few days too. See if anybody’s been around.” Jack’s advice provides Bozer with the same kind of relief Riley seemed to be feeling, and he nods emphatically.

“We’ll go do that. C’mon Riley.” He takes off towards his room without another word, and without checking to make sure Riley is following him, leaving Jack in the living room with Sam and G to have the kind of conversation he wants to avoid having for the third time today.

The ‘what do we do about Mac’ conversation.

“So,” Sam says, addressing Jack directly while G continues his survey of Mac and Bozer’s house. “Your missing teammate. That’s Angus MacGyver?”

“Yeah. Mac.” It’s a correction Jack can’t help making, reflexively reacting the way he always does when someone calls Mac ‘Angus’.

“That’s the…” G waves his hand at Sam, and Jack raises an eyebrow at them. “Isn’t it? The one with the-”

“Yeah.” Sam turns to Jack and explains. “We’ve worked with the Phoenix before. They loan us out when agencies need help, your guys have lended us a hand. Never met An-” The expression on Jack’s face corrects him without words. “Mac. Never met Mac, but we heard about him. He’s got a bit of a reputation.”

“Yeah,” Jack huffs out, almost a laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Got a picture? Be better if we knew what the guy we’re looking for looks like.” G makes a good point.

Of course, there’s what’s standard in these kinds of situations. There’s a copy of Mac’s ID photo in a drawer in the kitchen, and that’s the one he’s technically supposed to grab now. But nothing about this is standard, and Jack can’t help the urge to go a different route instead. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts scrolling through the photo album. There’s a specific picture he’s got in mind, and when he finds it, Jack pauses for a moment, looking at it, before clearing his throat and handing the device over to Sam and G.

It’s from Mac’s birthday, and it’s one of Jack’s favorite pictures of the kid. He’s standing between Bozer and Riley, their arms around each other, pressed close in a photo pose turned embrace. Mac is smiling, broad and uninhibited in a way it often isn’t. It’s a clear capture of his face head-on, giving the information the agents need to recognize the person they’re looking for, but this image rather than his ID photo serves another purpose.

It had been an urge Jack hadn’t been able to squash back, the impulse to make Mac as human as possible in the eyes of the only two people capable of physically going out and finding him. Jack doesn’t want them looking for an operative gone MIA. He doesn’t want them to be driving the streets of California searching for the asset they’d heard dramatized stories about in their collaborations with the Phoenix Foundation. He wants them looking for a bright young man with the rest of his life ahead of him, with people waiting for him to come home. A family that loved him, and wanted him back.

Sam looks at the photo and back up at Jack. The platitude Jack was expecting, following the obvious personal stake he’s just betrayed in Mac’s continued survival, doesn’t come. Instead, Sam nods, and gets right to the point.

“Can you get us those letters?”

* * *

Consciousness returns just as it had left - an impact. This time it’s a blunt slam, the hard line of a wall jarring Mac awake when he collides against it. He groans, and tries to push himself up off the floor.  The pain in his head peaks with the movement, and the sound that seems to reverberate in his skull. It doesn’t lessen as he tries to breathe through it, ratcheting up in intensity until every sense seems to be gone, replaced by white hot spikes of agony. Mac is reduced to laying flat on the ground, alternating gasping in air and gritting his teeth, trying to ride it out until it stops.

When his head finally stops feeling like it’s been split into several pieces, Mac rolls slowly onto his back, reaching a hand carefully up to protect the side of his face while he moves. He blinks up into a thick, almost tangible darkness, trying to discern any features of the room he’s been dumped in. None make themselves clear, and he almost groans again, catching himself just in time with the memory of how well that had gone for him last time.

With the power of a flashbang grenade, a burst of light explodes from several feet beyond where Mac lays, white-hot spears into the throbbing mess of his brain leaving him once again reduced to gasping incoherence. Tears he’s barely aware of track down his face, borne of pure suffering that seems to drag on forever. After an indeterminate amount of time, it finally ebbs enough for Mac to finally start picking up stimuli again outside of that overwhelming light.

Nothing about this can possibly get any worse. At least, that’s what Mac thinks, a despairing moment of clarity showing through the haze of pain and confusion, until he hears it. There’s a voice, speaking to him. And it’s a voice he knows well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter specific warnings: major character injury in the last segment
> 
> i keep forgetting to plug this, but come follow me on tumblr at altschmerzes! i post fic links, liveblog writing sometimes, and am always around to chat.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back for chapter six, folks!! here it is then, my take on the chrysalis thing. i'm not sure what popular opinion is about this, but something never felt quite right to me so. here we go. 
> 
> thanks again for your continued support! i love getting your comments and hearing what you have to say. you make this fun. 
> 
> come chat with me on tumblr, i'm at altschmerzes!

>   _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- "Spent Gladiator 2," The Mountain Goats_

As bad as he had been expecting it to be when he’d contemplated his impending position of observing the search for Mac completely unable to help, the expectation pales in comparison to the reality. Watching Sam scan the letters, reading them quickly then handing them to G to do the same, is one of the most disquieting feelings Jack has ever experienced. Not just because handing these letters, which Mac had thought were from his dad and contained so much personal information, to strangers feels like a betrayal, but because of a kind of stillness Jack is far from accustomed to. There’s nothing he can do but sit there quietly and wait.

Sam and G have no questions so far for him to answer, Riley and Bozer have disappeared from sight doing their thing with the security camera footage, and Jack is left helpless. Everyone else had something to do. It’s only him stuck frozen, empty air a buzzing static that leaves him on the jittering edge of losing it, right until Sam looks up, and does have a question.

“And you know these letters aren’t from his father.” It’s actually less of a question and more of a re-statement of fact, but it’s the request for clarification that Jack jumps at. It’s some way, any way he can contribute.

“Yeah, we do.” It’s hard to figure out how to explain this without launching into the whole heartsick story. There’s more there than Jack wants to tell these two. Stuff that just belongs to Mac, stuff he’s going to guard in Mac’s absence unless absolutely necessary to help find him. “We looked for him. If he’d been in LA, we’d have found him.”

Sam flicks one of the envelopes over. “No return address.”

“He either delivered it himself or got the postman to do it, and if I know Mac, he’d already have checked the security footage to see if he’d catch him bringing it. My guess is he didn’t, or he’d have told me.” Jack says that last part with more confidence than he feels. The truth is, now that he knows about the letters Mac hadn’t mentioned, that he’d been keeping things like that a secret, Jack isn’t so sure Mac would’ve told him anything of the sort. It’s a distressing, aching thought, and Jack swallows past it. There will be plenty of time to hurt about that and all the baggage it brings with it when Mac is home safe.

“How do you know his father isn’t involved with the Organization?”

The question is one Jack has been avoiding asking for some time now, ever since things with Mac’s father started looking stranger than the standard, impossibly unfair and painful but nevertheless garden variety story of a parent walking out of their child’s life and never looking back. It was a chilling prospect - the idea that Mac’s dad had been involved with his disappearance. That he’d played on Mac’s need for answers to draw him out to where he could be taken by people who would, without a doubt, hurt him.

“I can’t say for sure,” Jack says finally, avoiding Sam’s straightforward gaze, “but I really do believe it’s not that. Nothing we’ve found indicates the man’s involved with them, and these letters definitely weren’t written by him.” _Don’t ask me why. Please don’t ask me why_.

“...Okay. Not him then. Do you have any idea who _could_ have written them?”

Just Sam’s presence here, that would’ve been enough for Jack to feel he was going to owe this man, this old friend of Steve’s, for the rest of his life. It would’ve been enough that he’d shown up at all, willing to help find someone he didn’t know, had never met. But Sam hadn’t just shown up, he’d brought his partner, brought someone else to help. And then he’d taken the things Jack has said at face value. There have been several moments already where Jack could see a natural curiosity pushing to get out, the urge to ask visible through Sam’s professional exterior. He hasn’t asked, and that serves to amplify Jack’s already overwhelming gratitude.

Truthfully, Jack isn’t sure how much prodding he could take, outside of what was relevant, how much he could tolerate more questioning into their lives by these people he didn’t know. He didn’t want to be profiled, didn’t want Mac to be profiled either. As it stands, he can barely handle being treated like a victim when Sam is being so careful about it.

Because that’s what this comes down to, isn’t it? Jack is being treated like the victim here. Sam’s questions, they’re the same questions Jack would ask if he was sitting across from a petrified family member, trying to solve the kidnapping of a loved one. Sam is being careful about it, talking to him more like you would to a colleague than to the terrified father Jack is playing parallel to, but the tone is there. The careful, neutral tone that says ‘I know you’re in pain, and I’m trying not to make it worse, but I have to ask’.

“Jack?”

The prompt reminds him of the question and Jack clears his throat.

“Sorry. Yeah, I think I have an idea of who might’ve done it.”

A sound behind the couch draws Jack’s attention to Sam’s partner. G has been wandering around in the background of what’s going on, opening drawers in the kitchen, looking at items in the living room, at the periphery of the conversation between Jack and Sam. Jack doesn’t want to repeat all of this a second time, eyeing where G stands peering at a shelf on which stand several framed photographs.

“Should we wait for him?”

Sam shakes his head. “He’s listening.”

“Alright,” Jack agrees dubiously, then moves on to the point. “The letters, they have a lot of information in them. Stuff some random operative couldn’t have known, not even if they were good at their job. Personal stuff, like- okay. The part about the park, did you see that bit?”

“In the second letter, ‘Do you remember the park by the house, the one with the oak trees and the rope swings,” Sam reads, looking up from the page for confirmation. “Something from when he was a kid?”

“Yeah.” Jack shakes his head, feeling vaguely nauseated. “I know about that park, because Mac told me about it. It’s stuff like that. There’s too much in these letters. Stuff that people would only know if they’d been there, or if Mac had told them. And since we’ve ruled out someone who was there-”

“It’s got to be someone he told,” Sam finishes, and Jack nods.

“Exactly. Somebody he told, _and_ who has the skills to pull this off. Everyone who fits in both of those categories is in this house. Or… There is someone else.”

It’s precisely this point at which Riley and Bozer walk out into the living room. Riley is halfway through something about the security camera when Bozer seems to notice the looks on their faces and stops her with a hand on her wrist.

“What,” she says, looking from Jack, to Sam, and back again. “Why do you look like that.”

“There’s something you all need to know.” The point at which Thornton’s escape is something Jack can keep to himself has now passed, and much as he’s not looking forward to making this situation worse, they have to be told. “It’s about Patti. I caught some of what Matty’s assistant told her right before we left the Foundation earlier. Patti’s broken out of prison.”

“ _Patti_ ,” Riley says, at the same time that Bozer says, in the same tone, “Broke out of _prison_.”

There are a few beats of silence wherein it appears that neither of them can come up with anything more to say, struck dumb by the latest revelation. They both just stand there blinking at Jack, until Sam breaks the sudden stillness with a question.

“Who’s Patti?”

“Patricia Thornton,” Jack elaborates. “She was our old boss, before Matty Webber. She was a double agent, a mole for the Organization. Supposedly.” Jack can’t help but add that last part.

“Supposedly,” G repeats in a flat, ‘can this possibly get _more_ complicated’ tone.

When Jack turns to see how Riley and Bozer have taken that particular addition, he gets mixed results. Riley looks relieved while Bozer just looks increasingly confused.

“I never quite believed it,” he says, turning back away from them. Jack doesn’t want to see their faces when he says this, admits misgivings he’s kept hidden from them until now. “Still don’t, too many things that don’t add up, other stuff that’s just too neat, but this is… The timing, with her breaking out. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“So you think she could’ve been the one to write these letters, planned this whole thing?”

Before Jack can answer, the exchange between he and Sam is interrupted by G.

“Uh, guys.”

They turn to face the direction he’s looking in, following the line of where he points towards the back porch door, and there she is.

Patricia Thornton, standing in the doorway with her hands up, palms out.

In an instant, Jack is on his feet, gun out and raised. He moves without really thinking about it, placing himself directly between Patti and Riley and Bozer, who now stand behind him, weaponless and shocked. G and Sam have followed his example, both of their guns trained on Patti.

“Riley, call Matty,” Jack says without taking an ounce of focus off the woman who is now stepping into the house. “Don’t _move_ , Thornton.”

“You don’t want to do that, Riley.”

Hearing Patti’s voice again after so long is a shock to Jack’s system. He hadn’t really expected to ever see her again, not like this, not dressed for a day at work and standing in Mac and Bozer’s house rather than in a jumpsuit behind a pane of bulletproof glass.

“Jack.” Riley, speaking from behind him, sounds like she has no idea what to do, the word coming out panicked and thready.

“You’re going to want to hear what I have to say,” Patti calls across the room.

She still sounds like the Director, like she’s in charge and has all the answers. She looks tired, not as healthy as she had before, but overall she seems the same, and it’s disorienting. Jack can hardly keep track of which way is up, but he focuses on stamping down all of the confusion and conflictedness roiling in him and keeping his gun hand steady, his mind clear enough to handle this. A second ticks by, followed by another, and another, and Jack doesn’t waver.

“I’m here to help you,” Patti adds, stopping Jack’s thought process dead. “I’m here to help Mac.” She and Jack stare at one another while he weighs whether she’s telling the truth. Evaluates the odds that his suspicions had been correct all along, and Patti had never betrayed them in the first place.

“You have _two minutes_ ,” he says finally, stressing the brief window, “to explain to me why we shouldn’t call Matty and have you dragged back to prison _right now_.”

Still keeping her distance with her hands palms-out, Patti starts talking.

“When I figured out they were going to pin Chrysalis on me,” she says, getting right to the heart of the matter, “there was no time for me to do anything about it. I knew there was a mole in the Phoenix. I knew there were more than one. But I had no idea who they were. It could’ve been anyone. So I started working under the table, clearing people one by one, relying only on myself and the people I had already thoroughly investigated.”

“Which didn’t include us?”

“It couldn’t include _anyone_ until I investigated them, and I’d only just cleared you and Mac when I was arrested.” Patti gives a tiny, rueful shake of her head. “I hadn’t cleared Bozer and Riley yet. I was going to read all four of you in when I’d finished. Only, before I could, Nikki was back, and I had gone down.”

“And why not just _tell us_ this?” Jack demands. There has been no sound from anyone else in the room, Sam and G letting him take point, Riley and Bozer either following suit or too shocked or afraid to say anything. “Why let yourself get put away for something you didn’t do if all you had to do was _tell us_?”

“How would that have looked?” Emotion has pushed its way into Patti’s voice now, the veneer of patient explanation cracking and frustration, the isolation and anger of the past months showing through. “If I’d stood there and claimed I was framed, _how_ would that have made me look? If I trotted out some bullshit sounding story about a conspiracy, I’d have sounded even more guilty than everyone already thought I was. I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming, I’d been investigating Nikki even before Mac was shot at Lake Como, but in the end, she got to me before I got to her.”

“Nikki.” That voice is Riley, repeating the name in a flat, dead voice.

“She was good.” The praise comes in a bitter tone, Patti’s neutral look twitching into one of reproach. “Better than I anticipated. Better than she ever should’ve been, to pull this off. But I swear to you, I never betrayed any of you, or the Phoenix. I underestimated Nikki, and I’ll carry that failure with me for the rest of my life. But you have to let me help you.”

Jack wants to believe it. He wants to put the gun down and welcome Patti into the fold, wants to count this formidable woman he had relied on for so long, trusted so sincerely, as another ally in a far-too-small collection, but something holds him back. It seems too easy to just accept her explanation and let it go. Everything she’s saying makes perfect sense, folds neatly into suspicions Jack has harbored since the beginning, about Patti, about Nikki, about the Organization, all of it. But still, that kernel of doubt.

“Jack,” Patti says, addressing him directly. “Come on. You have the best instincts of anyone I’ve ever worked with. What does your gut tell you? Am I telling you the truth?”

Jack puts the gun down. Sam and G follow suit when he gestures for them to stand down, and the tension in the room eases slightly. Not much, but enough for Jack to finally be able to breathe. He motions Patti towards a seat, indicating she should come all the way in.

A hand on his shoulder catches Jack’s attention, and he looks to Riley and Bozer.

“Can we trust her?” Riley’s voice is quiet and wary, her tone reflected in Bozer’s face. “Can we just… _believe_ this?”

“I don’t know yet,” Jack answers, keeping his voice low as well. “But I think we can. I had a bad feeling about how that all went down, and this is just… It fits too well not to consider it. Besides, we need all the help we can get, and if she is with the Organization, she gets nothing by coming here. We’re supposed to believe it was his dad, remember? No reason for her to show her hand if she’s with them.”

“Okay.” Bozer agrees quickly, before Riley can answer. She nods along with him, as he keeps going. “I believe her. I think we should take the help.”

Returning to the rest of their haphazardly formed team, Jack makes a few quick introductions between Patti and their outsourced help, before getting down to brass tacks.

“Why break out now?” Riley asks. “I assume it’s ‘cause of Mac, but how did you find out?’

Patti sighs. It’s small and barely audible, and coming from her, it’s the equivalent of a heaving, loud gust of exhausted breath.

“I had made up my mind to wait,” she says. “I knew that Matty Webber would work it out eventually, that she would put the pieces together and figure out that I wasn’t Chrysalis. Matty’s good. She’s better than good, she’s the best. If anyone could figure out what Nikki and the Organization had done, it’s her. But then I heard about what happened to Mac, and I couldn’t wait any more.”

“How did you hear about that? It just happened this morning?”

Jack has a bad feeling he knows what the answer is going to be.

“Murdoc,” Patti says, and quickly moves on to add, “He isn’t involved. He just got a message to me that the Organization had Mac, and I had to help.”

“Why would he want you to _help_? I don’t get it, why tell you at all?” Bozer’s voice has the same strained, almost hysterical bent it gets every time he tries to muddle his way through the latest curveball his new life has thrown at him.

Again, Jack has the unwelcome suspicion that he knows just where this is going to go, and he’s going to hate it when they get there.

“Murdoc said that it was… Not fair, if MacGyver was tortured, and he didn’t get to be there. No fun, I believe were his words.” Patti’s tone tells them exactly how distasteful she finds that sentiment, and Jack grits his teeth hard enough that it hurts his jaw. Beside him on the couch, he feels Riley suddenly grab his hand and squeeze hard. She lets go just as quickly, but his fingers tingle in the memory of it, the phantom afterimage of her impulsive move.

“Who _is_ this guy?” Sam asks, reminding Jack that their new friends hadn’t been around for the Murdoc debacle.

“Contract killer, has this… obsession with Mac,” Jack explains. “If he’s not involved, it won’t matter, and I don’t think he is.”

“He told me he wasn’t, and he gave me information to help us,” Patti puts in, and Jack nods.

“Exactly. So for now, at least, Murdoc is back burner.” The name leaves an acrid taste in Jack’s mouth, but that’s nothing compared to the word Patti had said that’s gotten stuck in his brain, lodged in the gears and spinning there.

Torture. Of course, he’d known it from the start, from the moment he’d gotten that panicked call from Riley, that before this ended, something terrible was going to happen to Mac, but it’s different hearing it out loud like that. Torture. They’re going to torture him. Jack tries to find the good news in that, tries to focus on what Matty had said about how if they wanted information, that meant they wanted him alive, and you can’t torture a dead man. It doesn’t particularly work.

The sound of a generic cell phone ringtone splits the air, and G quickly stands and leaves the room to answer it. Sam hovers in the doorway behind him, the two of them speaking quietly to each other when G hangs up the call.

Jack doesn’t like it, this feeling of being on the outside of whatever is going on now. It’s a feeling he supposes he’s going to have to get used to. He waits in silence with Riley and Bozer while Sam and G talk about whatever is going on, Patti sitting stiffly across the room from them. Jack studies his former boss, takes in the way she’s shifting slightly, eyes flicking around the room. Patti looks uncomfortable, unsteady, and Jack can’t blame her. It must have been a long couple of months, waiting for Matty to put two and two and two and two together and figure out what had happened to her. Before he can say anything to her, Sam and G come back in.

“That was our technical analysts back at our office. We had them do us a favor and check some of the traffic cams in the area, there was a pickup truck with a covered bed that was reported stolen twenty minutes ago, matches the plates of a car caught on a camera just a few blocks away from here. We’ve got a read on where they were headed, last sighting they had was on the 10 out towards Joshua Tree National Park.” As Sam talks, explaining what they’d been told, Riley has grabbed her laptop off the kitchen counter where she’d left it, opening the lid and scrolling until she finds what she’s looking for.

“Is it this pickup?” she asks, twirling the screen around so that the NCIS agents can see it.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Sam confirms. “You pull this off the security camera?”

“We were just coming to tell you when Jack dropped the Thornton bomb. We couldn’t get any faces, and the camera doesn’t cover the back porch itself, just the door, so we still can’t see what happened out there, but we did get the truck. And the plate.” Riley shrugs, thumbnail picking at the edge of one of the laptop keys. “We’re still going through the older stuff so we don’t know if anyone had been around before, but…”

“It’s somewhere to start,” finishes Sam, nodding. “Give us a call if you find anything else, meanwhile, we should get a move on. They’ve already got a head start, and if we can at least get going in the direction they left in, we can make up some time. Alright?” This last question is directed at Jack, who nods.

“Alright,” he says, following Sam and G to the door. He takes one step outside then stops on the porch, remembering that he isn’t going with them. “Call me if you find anything. And I mean _anything_.”

Sam stops a few paces away and looks back. “We will,” he promises, and before Jack knows it, the car is pulling out of the driveway and disappearing down the street.

Jack is left standing outside the house, Patti, Bozer, and Riley inside behind him, and a heavy, aching pain in his chest, the word ‘torture’ rattling around his ribcage. He glances over his shoulder, catches sight of Patti, and feels a tiny bit of the iron grip on his heart loosen. It feels better than he can describe to have her here and on their side, and with every person who arrives to help, Jack feels like the scales are weighted a little more in their favor. Maybe things would be okay.

 _No_ , Jack thinks to himself before turning around and going back inside. _Things_ will _be okay._ There can’t be room for any other option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter specific warnings: well. nikki fans probably give this one a miss, i guess? 
> 
> also no, murdoc isn't going to make an appearance here, he just made a convenient deus ex machina tool.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all, some news about the update schedule! idk how much i talk about this generally on the internet, but i'm a junior in university, and i have a job as well, so things are pretty busy for me in general. it is however finals in like two weeks so it's about to get busier. therefore, at least until finals are out and my life calms down a little, i'm gonna go to a once a week posting schedule, some time over the weekend most likely. i hope you understand, and rest assured, i'm not dropping this fic, just posting a little less often.

>   _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- "Spent Gladiator 2," The Mountain Goats_

_Nothing about this can possibly get any worse. At least, that’s what Mac thinks, a despairing moment of clarity showing through the haze of pain and confusion, until he hears it. There’s a voice, speaking to him. And it’s a voice he knows well._

* * *

Mac supposes he should be more surprised. It’s Nikki, because of course it’s Nikki, and the realization should cut through the scar that’s grown over the last wound she left him with, opening it up and leaving him there, bleeding on the ground. However, if there’s any positive side to the fact that he’s currently bleeding on the ground for different reasons entirely, it’s that, at his current level of physical pain, Mac doesn’t really have room for the emotional variety. The stabbing spikes of agony in his head have barely calmed enough for him to recognize her, let alone emotionally process what her presence here actually means.

Nikki says his name again, the auditory input sending a dull pulse through Mac’s concussed skull to complement the unmoving background of existing hurt. He groans softly in response, relieved when the sound doesn’t send him straight into catatonia like last time.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” Nikki says, her body rising into view as she climbs up over the edge of the floor of the room he’s woken in.

It’s now that he finds himself with the wherewithal and physical ability to look around, figure out where the hell exactly he is. The room is long and narrow, seeming to lack one wall entirely, given the gaping entrance through which Nikki has appeared. The walls and floor are the same dull grey, though the texture is different, with the walls sporting rivets systematically bolted along lines of crimped-patterned sheets of metal. It’s not until Nikki pulls a box over across from him and sits on it, regarding him with an impassive stare and then looking away, that Mac puts it together.

A freight truck. He’s not in a room at all, but rather the rear compartment of a truck used for long-haul shipping transport.

The light outside still feels like stabbing himself in the brain with an ice pick to look at, so he can only manage a few blinks before shutting his eyes again, squinting hard against the brightness. It’s pale and dry outside, and Mac catches sight of cracked ground and low, scraggy brush. None of it is identifiable, especially to Mac’s jumbled mind. It just looks like California.

“This sucks.” It’s Nikki speaking again that manages to capture Mac’s wandering attention.

He looks at her, head throbbing with the movement, and tries to make sense of this. Nikki’s betrayal actually _had_ been a betrayal, then. It’s giving Mac whiplash, trying to figure out who in his life was telling the truth and when, where Nikki fit into it all. She’s right, this does suck, though Mac thinks that really ought to have been his line.

“Nikki?” The first word Mac has managed to speak comes out hoarse and unsteady, accompanied by starbursts of pain in his jaw and behind his eyes that seem to punish him for the crime of speaking.

“Yep. Sorry you had to find out this way.” The strangest thing is, she really does sound apologetic. Not necessarily remorseful, more a little embarrassed, but apologetic nonetheless. Focusing this long on her face has given Mac enough time to notice her expression, details filtering in through the concussion haze. She looks like she finds what’s happening now to be an extremely distasteful set of circumstances. Her nose is slightly wrinkled, and her gaze keeps shifting around the ‘room’, like she can’t quite pick one thing to focus on.

It’s a look Mac recognizes from missions she hadn’t liked, ones she found particularly off-putting. Ones she’d been glad to get through, tight-lipped and annoyed after having her opinion overruled or frustrated over a displeasing yet necessary task. It’s an unnerving look to be be on the receiving end of.

“What do you _want_ , Nikki?” The question comes out slow and tired, not defiant like he’d meant it to.

“This is not about _me_ ,” Nikki snaps, looking at him directly for the first time since she’d climbed into the back of the truck. She looks almost offended. “I hate that it ended this way. Our relationship was real, Mac, I had real feelings for you. I didn’t want this to happen. I wish it hadn’t been you. I wish it had been _anyone_ but you.”

Obviously, Mac is not processing things at a hundred percent, and his perception of the situation may not be entirely reliable, but not even the worst concussion can seem to explain what he’s getting from this. He blinks at Nikki, openly staring as he tries to figure out what she’s going for. He can’t seem to find the point of why she’s telling him this. Is it supposed to make him feel better about this? Is it supposed to save some part of his opinion of her? Because it’s not doing either one.

The knowledge that Nikki cared about him, just not enough to help him,  that her problem here was not _what_ was happening but _who_ it was happening to none of these details  improve anything about how Mac feels, about the situation or about her. If anything, it makes it that much worse, a concept that Mac never would have considered possible if he wasn’t experiencing it firsthand.

Mac doesn’t respond. Nikki shakes her head and gets up, a flick of frustration crossing her face before returning to its previous expression of detached dislike.

Mac pushes himself agonizingly up off the floor, prompted into action by the half-step Nikki has taken towards him, stopping to rifle through her pockets. Even the small movement leaves him spent and panting, the corrugated wall of the truck behind his back the only thing holding him up. His head drops back against it, the impact sending shockwaves through his skull and down his spine into his shoulders. He looks up warily at Nikki, who has found what she was looking for. She crosses over to him, kneeling and pulling him forward, away from the wall.

“I really don’t want to do this,” Nikki says as she pulls his arms behind his back. Under ordinary circumstances, Mac could have broken away. He could’ve gotten out of her grip and run, escaped through the open end of the truck. But these aren’t ordinary circumstances, and though he’s adjusted to the ship-deck feeling of a concussion and the waves of pain crashing over him every time he moves or is moved Mac knows he’s in no condition to fight anyone. So, he bides his time and waits, sure the opportunity is coming.

Metal that feels freezing cold under the heat of a California afternoon comes in contact with Mac’s wrist, and he jerks it reflexively away, only to have his hand caught in hers. It’s a feeling he used to know well, and the echo of how her fingers used to thread gently through his hovers beneath the current iron-tight grip forcing his wrist into the cuff.

“Don’t make this any harder than it has to be, Mac, please.” It’s half annoyed, half saddened, and he feels sick hearing it. “I wish this wasn’t necessary, but you and I both know what you’re capable of.”

The next grab is to his wounded hand, the one caught in the blow that crushed his phone and did whatever the hell it did to the side of his face that he still feels like he’s been struck with a meat tenderizer. An involuntary gasp is yanked out of him at the feeling of the injured limb being tightly locked into the other side of the cuffs, the jostling aggravating the damage. Nikki steps back and without her support Mac falls to the side, landing hard on his elbow in an awkward attempt to keep himself from sprawling face-first into the floor.

By the time the latest movement inspired wave of pain has cleared and Mac is capable of focusing on anything again, Nikki is out of the truck, standing on the ground and looking at him. She shakes her head and reaches for the chain hanging from the back door of the storage container.

“Wait,” Mac calls, and Nikki pauses, her hand on the pulley.

“What?”

“Will you at least tell me where we are?”

For a long moment it seems like she isn’t going to answer. She just stands there and looks at him, until she makes a decision, and says, “It’s not where we are, it’s where we’re going. When you steal something, Mac, you hide it somewhere safe. We’re going to put you somewhere safe.”  There’s a pause. “Keep still and it’ll hurt less,” she says like she’s doing him a favor. “During transport. And when they ask, just tell them, and it’ll be over quick. I made them promise me that much.”

The sound the rolling door makes as it’s pulled down and shut, cutting off the light that had been so blinding before, is loud enough, grating enough on Mac’s fried senses that it leaves no room behind to think about what that means. If he’d been able to form any kind of coherent thought, he’d have been grateful for that.

* * *

Riley doesn’t know how to feel. A lot has happened in the last several hours, making a day feel longer than a day, and now here she is. Sitting on the edge of the couch and looking at a woman she had until minutes ago been glad she’d never see again. Patricia Thornton. Patti is here, and for the life of her, Riley can’t seem to settle on how to feel about that.

One second she’s intensely, reverently glad that Patti is with them for this, not just because having her working with them makes Riley feel that much more confident in their ability to get Mac back in one piece, but because the betrayal had hit her hard, and Riley had missed her. Patti had laid the groundwork that was forming Riley into a skilled, capable agent, and she’d never felt quite like she had to prove herself like she did with Matty.

The next moment, though, that relief is gone, replaced by bitterness and anger. It was just so _unfair_. Patti’s life had been ripped out from under her, and Riley can’t help but feel partially responsible. Sure, it was Nikki and the Organization that had framed her, but they should’ve figured it out. That was what they were supposed to do. They unraveled the plans of the bad guys before they could hurt anyone.

Riley listens to Patti and Jack talk, looking at Patti every couple of seconds. She can’t quite look at the woman for longer than a moment before the relief-anger-guilt starts to choke her. So she settles for glances, eyes otherwise wandering around the room, taking in things she’s seen a hundred times like it’s fascinating, new information.

“That never made sense to me,” Jack is saying. “That Murdoc shot you. Part of Nikki’s whole argument was that she’d been caught in the crossfire when the Organization caught up to us. Why’d they have let her get shot if she was working with them, was her point. We accepted it, but it was… It never sat well with me.”

The point leaves a sour taste in Riley’s mouth, because Jack is right. It hadn’t made sense, they had just wanted to believe it. They’d wanted to believe that Nikki was telling the truth, because it hurt less that way. But she wasn’t the only one injured by the Organization, and of those who had, her injury had been minor. Looking back on it, so many things hadn’t made sense, so much didn’t add up, and Riley can’t believe it took this long.

Patti had been shot too. So had Mac, for that matter, near-fatally, and Nikki had allowed it to happen. A biological weapon had nearly been unleashed. She’d held Mac at gunpoint, several times. The pile of evidence is higher every time Riley looks at it. She can’t believe she hadn’t seen it before.

“They were going to make him save himself.” Bozer has spoken up from where he’s sitting at the kitchen island, turning a pad of Post-Its into neon confetti one sheet at a time. Riley doesn’t know where he got it from or what tearing the notes into pieces is supposed to accomplish, but at least he’s keeping his hands busy, which is more than she can say for herself at the moment.

It’s all Riley can do to keep from grabbing Jack’s hand again, holding onto it hard, like she was a little kid expecting him to make it all okay. So, objectively, Post-Its weren’t the worst idea.

“That was basically what Nikki said too,” Bozer continues, pulling a new paper off the stack and tearing it in half. “He says that’s why she let them get the biological weapon thing, back after Lake Como. Because she knew he wouldn’t let it go off. Like it was on _him_. And now whoever’s in charge, whoever’s giving Matty her orders, they’re putting his _life_ on him now, and it’s- It’s not right.” The next rip goes at an angle, and the accidental swipe of Bozer’s hand sends a cloud of Post-It confetti fluttering to the floor.

“Well it’s not gonna happen,” Jack says, words clipped and blunt. “Matty made a loophole, and we’re taking it. He’s not alone. Even if we can’t be there, we’re gonna get him out.”

Riley shifts slightly closer to him, far closer than she would sit under normal circumstances. Jack’s assertion is strong, forceful with how much he believes it, and maybe she can absorb some of that certainty herself, because she can’t seem to find much of her own at the moment.

“Hopefully, my escape should help keep eyes off you while you do that. They’ll be too busy looking for me to watch you too close.”

A thought occurs to Riley and she looks directly at Patti. She feels cold and the tips of her fingers are tingling, the physical symptoms of sudden, extreme anxiety becoming a familiar, recognizable thing.

“Unless they follow you right to us,” she says, and Patti looks at her.

There’s a moment where the two of them just look at each other, even gaze meeting anxious frown. Riley wants to be comforted by the way Patti doesn’t flinch or waver, but nothing much is comforting to her now.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Patti says, with a small, humorless smile. “I didn’t get as far as I did in this job by being the kind of person who gets caught. Besides, there was another reason I had to come here. Mac’s kidnapping wasn’t the only thing Murdoc told me about, he gave me a lead.”

“A lead?” Next to her, Riley feels Jack sit up straighter, the couch shifting under the movement. “What kind of lead?”

“There are three bases in this half of the country that they could be taking him to,” Patti explains. “One is in the middle of some unincorporated towns to the North in Oregon. The other two are to the East, one near Vernon, Utah, and one a ways outside of Roswell, New Mexico. They’re all in the middle of the desert, nowhere anybody would think to look. He didn’t know which one, but those are where it’s likely they’re taking him. Once the NCIS agents track them far enough to know what direction they’re headed in, we can give them a more specific location.”

While Bozer gets up to rifle through a closet for the paper state maps Riley had always made fun of Mac for having, she gets up and walks back to the island where she’d left her computer. It’s still open to the screen capture of the truck leaving the driveway, the license plate grainy but readable. Riley squints at the collection of letters and numbers, trying to decipher some kind of deeper meaning from them. None is forthcoming and she shakes her head, pressing the heels of her hands over her eyes. She’s beginning to feel tired, the previous night’s poor sleep catching up to her, but she can’t afford to sleep now, not with G and Sam counting on her for technical support.

Her phone buzzes on the counter next to her elbow, the plastic casing making a loud rattling sound against the hard surface and startling her. Riley picks it up, scanning the message and already swiveling to face the rest of them before she’s finished reading it.

“They found the truck,” she says, voice raised so she could be heard by all three in their scattered locations. “Looks like it got dumped at some gas station, they must’ve transferred Mac to another car. I’m gonna use traffic cams and security footage and figure out which car they left in. Hopefully it has a LoJack and we can track it that way.”

“You can do all that from here?” Bozer asks, poking his head around the wall to stare at her, impressed.

“I can’t,” Riley admits, looking back down at her phone and scrolling through her contacts. L, M, N, O, P… “But I have friends who can. Jack said to call whoever we could, so… I used to go to conventions. Hacker conventions, and I’ve got friends in those circles. One of them works for the FBI, she owes me a favor and besides, she’s got a soft spot a mile wide for people in trouble. I think she’ll help.”

When she looks up, she sees Jack, standing in the living room with Patti and nodding. There’s a look on his face that Riley has seen there before, a look that always makes her want to do whatever she’d done to put it there again, just to bring the look back. Jack’s proud of her, proud of what she’s done. He thinks it’s going to help, and that in turn gives her some hope that it will.

Finally locating the person she’d been looking for, Riley holds the phone up to her ear and waits for the ring. With any luck, Jack will be right, and calling for help is going to work. It has to.

* * *

Jack leaves Riley to her plan, her voice a low background noise as she talks to her hacker friend, and turns his attention instead to Bozer instead. He has by this point dug the maps out of the closet and laid them out for Patti on the table, leaving her there with a handful of markers and going to sit on the couch. He doesn’t look good. One of Bozer’s legs is jittering up and down, hands clasped between his knees, and he’s staring at the floor. With a sigh, Jack walks over and sits down next to him.

“How’re you holding up, kid?” he asks, keeping his voice quiet and calm.

Bozer shakes his head, lips pressed tightly together. It takes him a while to respond.

“I don’t understand,” he says slowly, and Jack doesn’t interrupt, letting him take his time getting the words together and out. “I don’t _understand_ why we aren’t just. Ignoring orders and going after him anyway. It’s not like you guys are exactly _known_ for _following the rules_. We could just ignore what Matty said and go anyway.”

“I can’t say I didn’t think of that,” Jack tells him honestly. “When she told me, first thing I did was start coming up with a plan to do it anyway, to get out of there and hit the road, track Mac down no matter what she said. But Matty’s bosses, it’s not that they don’t want _us_ lookin’ for Mac, they don’t want _anyone_ looking for him.”

“So?” Bozer shakes his head, looking up at Jack with incomprehension in his face and frustration in his voice. “Why does that _matter_?”

“Because there’s two parts of an investigation.” It’s a thought process Jack has been through many times, leaving him with the ability to clearly and promptly outline why, exactly, that matters. “There’s the manpower and the means. They’re going to have eyes on the house, Matty said as much. If we move, they’ll know, and we’ll lose the means. Patti here helping us, Sam and G out there looking for him, Riley and her hacker friends gathering intel… All that stops if they find out we’re doing this. If we want to help him, if we want _anyone_ to help him, it can’t be us out there ourselves. If we want to stay in the game, Boze, this is how we have to play it.”

Looking back down to the carpet, Bozer nods shallowly. He seems to have accepted Jack’s explanation, even if he clearly doesn’t like it, and that’s fine. He doesn’t have to like it. Jack himself doesn’t like it. But it’s necessary. Jack hadn’t been looking forward to arguing with him about it, the possibility of a fight over this not out of the realm of reasonable expectation. Bozer doesn’t have much experience here, and he’s about as emotionally involved as you can get. Bozer is green, and Mac is family, and Jack wasn’t looking forward to having to lay down the law. Luckily, he hadn’t had to.

Jack watches Bozer for a while longer, taking in the way the young man is holding himself rigidly, trying to maintain control over his composure. It’s seeping out around the edges though, just how afraid he is, just how much all of this is hurting him. His shoulders are tense, the bouncing leg back, and his hands are trembling. Not able to just sit there any longer and not do anything, Jack reaches out to him, laying a hand between Bozer’s shoulder blades. He can feel shaking now, the way Bozer’s breathing is unsteady and catching occasionally.

There’s nothing to say, no way to make this seem any better than it is. So Jack just sits there with him, palm pressed comfortingly against his back, thumb sweeping slowly across the fabric of his t-shirt. They stay like that until Bozer’s breathing has calmed and the shaking has stopped, leg stilled.

Neither of them say anything about it when Bozer lifts his head again and looks at Jack, nodding. Jack merely nods back and stands, patting him gently and getting up, walking out of the house onto the back deck and retrieving his phone from his pocket. It’s time to check in with G and Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: again, probably not for fans of nikki? as a caution. major character injury in the first segment.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy spring, it's blizzarding in minnesota and we're gonna be sitting pretty on almost two feet by tomorrow morning. i'm.... displeased. anyhow, again, i apologize for the lengthened time between updates, but finals are really kicking my ass right now, and while this thing is basically keeping me sane through the last couple weeks of school, i'm low on time. 
> 
> again, you can follow me on tumblr at altschmerzes, or on my macgyver a softer world edit blog asofterphoenixfoundation! 
> 
> thanks for your great comments, and i hope you continue to let me know what you're thinking of this fic!

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- "Spent Gladiator 2," The Mountain Goats_

The sound of Sam’s ringtone is startling in the relative quiet of the car. The phone rattles against the plastic housing of the center console, and G, navigating from the passenger’s seat, fishes it out, holding it up.

“Dalton is calling,” he says, waving the device at Sam.

“Can you answer it?” Sam makes the request without taking his eyes off the road. “It could be important.”

“This is Sam’s phone, Callen speaking,” G says, accepting the call. He listens to the barely familiar voice of Jack Dalton, eyes wandering out over the latest stretch of indistinguishable desert and scrub. It’s the same questions he’s heard from the man several times by now. What’s your progress? Where are you? Have you found anything?

Dalton is living the worst possible Catch-22 G can imagine being caught in. He understands the urge to be as indirectly involved as you can be when circumstances bar you from being involved directly. He’s been here before, even, having to guide a petrified family through what’s likely the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. Combining that family with a team of skilled investigators makes things… more complicated. G can empathize, truly, but after the latest call with no new information to report, it’s getting harder to give the same answers over and over again.

“We will let you know,” G says, trying to convey a kind but firm tone, “when we have new information, but for now it’s the same as when you called twenty minutes ago. We’re moving as fast as we can.” He listens to Dalton’s response, nods, then hangs up.

“I just don’t know what to tell him,” G says into the empty space left in the car by the end of the call. “We _have_ nothing to tell him.”

“You’d be doing the same thing in his position, G.” Sam’s rebuke is light but pointed. “You can’t tell me you wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t be _in_ his position in the first place, I’d have taken off looking myself the instant the boss’s back was turned.”

“G.”

He’d known before he said it that it was the wrong thing to say, an unfair statement meant to distance himself from a circumstance he’s pretty sure would kill him if he were confronted with it. G cringes then looks down for a moment, setting the phone back in the cup holder it had been in before it rang. He watches it, half expecting it to ring again, then shakes his head and looks back out the window.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “I’d be doing the same thing.”

* * *

Patti walks out of the house as Jack’s conversation with Sam and G, if the brief call even counts as a conversation, is ending. She leans against the doorframe and considers him, giving him some time to breathe through whatever that short interaction had left him with.

“I would ask if you were alright,” Patti says eventually, voice quiet but carrying easily through the still air, “but that seems like a stupid question.”

Jack doesn’t turn to face her but his shoulders jerk a little, a short huff of a humorless, empty laugh. “Yeah. Stupid question.”

Patti nods, gathering the answer from his confirmation of the nature of the question. Jack isn’t alright, probably won’t be until he has Mac inside with Riley and Bozer. Probably won’t be _after_ that, if she’s realistic, will probably take a week of hovering and fussing and barely sleeping at night to reach anything approaching ‘alright’. There’s nothing she can do to help that, to speed that, but she’s spent months not being able to do anything, say anything, and she can’t quite bring herself to keep quiet when she has the option not to.

“If it helps at all, which it probably won’t,” she says, keeping her voice light and not looking right at Jack, “just know that Matty Webber would not have put you in this position unless she absolutely had to. There had to have been no other option.”

“I know.” If Jack didn’t sound so tired, Patti might’ve thought he was mad. “She’d never have- She told me as much. This isn’t what she wanted, Mac out there by himself, she didn’t- Matty doesn’t like him trying to do things solo when he’s gunning for it, she’s not happy about him doing things solo when I’m _with him_. She never- She wouldn’t- You know, she is the first person to do that.” The sudden jump from broken off, chopped pieces of up-pitched sentences to a calm, full statement is a little jarring, as is the fact that Patti has no idea what he’s talking about.

“The first person to do what?” she prompts after long enough that she’s not sure Jack will elaborate on his own.

“I mean no disrespect to you, Patti,” is what he says instead, turning to look at her. It’s the first time he’s made eye contact since she walked out here. “You never asked more of him than he could give, and never made him go it alone. You always made sure he had backup. But Matty… Nobody before Matty tried to tell Mac to slow down. She was always on him about consequences, and I know he hated it, but… He isn’t Superman. It scares the life outta me, how often people expect him to be. He’s good, of course he’s good, he’s the best, but we work in teams for a reason. _Superman_ isn’t supposed to do this shit alone.”

“That was part of what reinforced my suspicions about Nikki.” It’s a relief, honestly to be able to discuss this with someone. Of any of them, Patti was sure Jack had his reservations about their former teammate. Like she’d told him, he has the best intuition of anyone she’s worked with, and though he’d never said anything, she’d always suspected Jack had some of the same concerns she did. “‘Mac’ll fix it’, she said that a lot. She was always so… unconcerned. ‘Mac’ll fix it’. Like it didn’t matter what kind of mess got made, he’d clean it up.”

“And now Matty’s bosses are saying the same damn thing,” Jack mutters, walking away from the house out to the rail at the edge of the porch. His forearms lay braced against it, head hung low over his clasped hands. Patti follows, leaning against the railing a few feet away from Jack. “They… He’ll save himself and if he doesn’t, he’ll die, and it’ll be his fault for not being able to. That’s what they’ve decided. About Mac. About my partner, my boy.”

“He’s not going to die.” Patti says it with as much certainty as she can muster, which is thankfully quite a lot. She believes what she’s saying, even if it sounds like a platitude. “I know this is killing you, but we’re going to get him back. NCIS is good, we’ve worked with them before. Riley’s incredible, I’m sure her contacts are too. We’re doing everything we can from here. Mac is going to come home.”

“It is… _killing_ me,” Jack agrees, voice barely audible. It’s shaking and hard, like he’s barely keeping control of it. “But the worst part is, I know what he’s thinking. I know we’ll get him back, I know that, but for now, he’s expecting me to come for him. He’s expecting me to save him, because I always do, and I’m not going to this time. I can’t and that, _that_ is what’s killing me. Knowing he’s expecting me to walk through the door, and I’m stuck _here_.” He pauses, looks at her briefly, looks back out to the city. “If you don’t mind, I’d- I’d like to be alone for a while.”

Patti nods. It’s a reasonable request. She sets a hand on his back, sliding up to squeeze his trembling shoulder, then leaves the balcony without another word. There’s nothing more she can think of to say.

* * *

Riley isn’t sure how much time has passed when the sound of the sliding door opening catches her attention away from the tracking signal of G and Sam’s car blinking a muted green on her laptop. She looks up and sees Jack, walking over to her from where he’s been outside for what seems like forever. It’s grown dark in the hours between the last time they spoke and now. Riley watches him draw closer and adjusts her position on the stool at the kitchen island, crossing one of her ankles over her knee. Jack bumps into her gently when he reaches her and she bumps back, knocking her shoulder into his side.

“How’s it looking?” he asks, and she sighs lightly. The green tracking light keeps blinking on the screen.

“Just got off the phone with G and Sam like five minutes ago.” Riley has to admit she’s starting to like these two. They’ve been nothing but dedicated and serious, handling someone else’s crisis with a grace and professionalism that Riley doesn’t know she’d be able to manage. It’s reassuring to have something to lean on, even if it’s just the voice of a calm stranger on the other end of a phone. “We’ve got a general direction to go off, now, and we know what they’re driving. My friend, Penelope, she got me some information from freight truck weigh stations, and they’re driving a shipping truck with a FedEx logo on the side.”

Leaning over and snagging a forgotten Sharpie off the island next to her computer, Riley hops off the stool and gestures for Jack to follow her. She walks around to where the map is sitting, three areas starred and noted as the potential Organization bases they were taking Mac to.

“They’re headed North on the I-15,” Riley says, leaning over the map to cross out one of the bases. “If they were going to Oregon, they’d be on 95, so we can rule this one-” her marker squeaks across the laminated surface, crossing out the star between the unincorporated towns of Crowley, Rome, and Diamond, “out as an option. We’re left with these two.” She gestures with the marker at the starred areas near Vernon, Utah, and Roswell, New Mexico.

“But we don’t know which one yet?” Jack asks, frowning at the map. Riley can see what he’s concerned about.

There are at least eight hundred miles between the two locations. Riley knows this because she checked, measuring with an actual ruler against the map key at the bottom. That’s a major divergence, if they were to pick one to head towards, only to discover it was the other one they had actually taken Mac to. It’s a big risk. Time is not something they have in abundance, and every moment spent on a wrong track is a moment Mac was possibly being tortured, a moment closer to something he may not be able to come back from.

“How long until they have to make the choice?” Jack’s question is left un-elaborated on but Riley doesn’t need him to explain. She knows exactly what he’s asking.

“Las Vegas.” Her answer comes with a hand skimming the map, the tiny font of Las Vegas, Nevada disappearing under one finger. “The I-15 is taking them right to it, that’s where the truck is headed now. But we don’t know when they’re gonna ditch it and switch to another vehicle. They’ve already done that twice, it’s pretty safe to assume they’re gonna do it again. Right now, they’re on track, but as soon as they hit Vegas… That’s when they’ve gotta make the call.”

Jack nods silently, staring at the map as he processes the information.

There’s another uncertainty hanging over them in addition to the split point. It’s a calculation Riley can’t help but make, the specter of exhaustion already hanging over her shoulders, a mug of coffee sitting by her laptop growing cold and gross. Las Vegas is not close to Joshua Tree, not close to Los Angeles, and both Vernon and Roswell are a long ways away from there. It’s a long drive, and she doesn’t know what kind of a day G and Sam had already been having before they’d been called in on this.

“If we have to spend too much longer figuring out which direction they went in,” she says quietly, “G and Sam are going to have to stop and rest. There’s only so much swapping drivers you can do, and they’ve both gotta be sharp if they’re gonna get Mac out of there on their own. We’re pushing when they’re gonna have to get some sleep.”

Riley feels Jack’s eyes on her as she pushes away from the kitchen island, distancing herself from the map physically as if that will distance her emotionally from the implications of the decisions hanging over their heads. She shakes her head, walking out into the living room and stopping at the edge of the carpet. Bozer is laying on the couch with his cell hanging in his hand, knuckles grazing the carpet. He’d been on the phone with someone previously, taking over the responsibility of relaying to Riley what a friend of hers was saying about a traffic camera at a gas station, but now that the call has ended he’s left with nothing to do once again.

It’s not a situation Riley envies. She can’t imagine what kind of a mess she’d be right now if she didn’t have that map on the table, if she didn’t have the blinking light of G and Sam’s car traversing a pixelated interstate to keep an eye on. Of all of them, Riley feels the luckiest right about now. She at least has something she can do.

“Speaking of rest, it’s about time you got some.”

From behind her, Jack’s voice catches her attention. Riley looks over her shoulder, frowning at him. He’s still standing next to the island, arms folded and face wearing a stern expression, one she and Mac had been laughing about just a few days ago.

It’s like a rapidly swinging pendulum, how Jack’s presence is making her feel right now. On one hand, strength and security, the way that things always feel less scary when Jack is there. On the other hand, the weighing shroud of the knowledge that, right now, she is the only one who can concretely help Mac, even if it is from a distance. If she gives in to the fragile fear she can feel just beneath the surface, threatening to paralyze her lungs and break her heart, if she lets herself feel like a kid under Jack’s instructions about her health, his stern look, she’s going to crack and that responsibility will go crashing to the floor. Tempting as it is to let him send her to bed, dispatch her under the justification of getting some rest, Riley can’t.

Mac needs her. She can’t be some kid who wants her dad to make everything okay right now.

“I can’t,” she says out loud, walking past him and sitting back down at her computer. “I need to be up if Sam and G need me. They could run into a problem at any point, I need to be able to help.”

It seems for a moment like Jack is going to argue with her. She can feel the tension of the air as he breathes in and stops before speaking, the empty apprehension of him deciding whether or not to say something making her head buzz like there’s a radio just out of tune, playing barely loud enough to be noticable. He doesn’t argue. Jack shakes his head and turns around, heading back in to the living room she’s just left.

From where she perches back on her stool at the island, Riley watches Jack crouch down next to the couch, shake Bozer’s shoulder. Bozer, who had been drifting in and out of that hazy place just before sleep, sits up slowly, scrubbing at his face with his hands, one of which still holds the phone. At this distance, Riley can’t hear whatever it is Jack is saying to him, and she figures she doesn’t really need to. The effect is clear enough.

Bozer gets up off the couch and walks slowly towards the hall down which lies he and Mac’s bedrooms. He seems hesitant about it, pausing in the threshold of the hallway and looking over his shoulder, uncertainty playing across his face. Jack walks over to him and they talk again, still too quiet for Riley to hear. This time she thinks she might’ve liked to know what was said, as whatever it was prompted Bozer to nod and walk the rest of the way down the hall, disappearing into his room.

Once he’s seen Bozer safely off, Jack turns around and comes back into the kitchen, pulling a stool over next to Riley’s and sitting down. She quirks an eyebrow at him, silently asking what he’s doing, and he just gives her a small smile, about quarter-strength compared to his usual grin. He doesn’t say anything as Riley turns back to her computer, hitting a few keys and beginning to lay projected routes over the map, comparing distances and times.

Vernon, Utah or Roswell, New Mexico.

“Come on, Mac,” Riley mutters, staring at the screen, at the little blinking green light that won’t give her any answers. “Where are you?”

* * *

Mac isn’t sure how long they’ve been driving. His shoulders, held in a strained angle by his cuffed hands, have long since passed the point of simply painful, ratcheting up into burning agony that is thoroughly trouncing his head in terms of which injury is monopolizing his attention at this moment in time. He’d quickly discovered through an attempt at manipulating his wrists that Nikki had taken extra precautions when restraining him.

The cuffs she’d used weren’t the normal variety, bracelets linked by a short chain. No, these were rigid all the way through, preventing Mac from so much as twisting his hands or moving his forearms away from each other. The cuffs have also been applied tight enough that he can feel the edges digging into the skin of his wrists. Even if he were to dislocate a thumb, there’s no way he could slip out of them.

As such, Mac has been left helpless on the floor of the shipping truck, unable to prevent himself from rolling as the vehicle rounds corners and comes to the occasional stop. Being held in place like this, his hands secured uselessly behind his back, incapable of protecting his battered head, is nothing short of psychologically horrifying, never mind the physical suffering involved. It’s a level of vulnerability that leaves Mac on edge and just this side of panic, especially when combined with his existing concussion already distorting his regulation of his emotional state.

 _Jack is coming for me_.

The thought has been rattling around in his brain for the last however long he’s been back here, one thread of hope to hold onto among the impossible circumstances he’s found himself trapped in. Mac may be in a world of hurt, may be reduced to trying to gasp through pain and panic he can barely keep from overwhelming him entirely, but there is one thing for certain. One thing that’s always certain, no matter how bad things get.

And it’s this certainty he clings to as the truck comes to its final stop, the door rolling up and light blinding him once more. Mac focuses as hard as he can on those words, as hands grab him and yank him roughly to his feet. He’s sure he’d have fallen immediately if it weren’t for that bruising grip on his arms, half dragging, half carrying him down out of the truck and into an unremarkable building amidst an endless stretch of unremarkable desert. With his feet stumbling over the ground in a disorganized stagger, shoulders and head screaming, Mac thinks those five words on repeat.

 _Jack is coming for me. Jack is coming for me_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: major character injury in the last section


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, one final down, three to go! send me good vibes on tuesday, y'all, i've also got two job interviews. also kudos to anybody reading these periodic updates on my life?? you guys are the best.
> 
> speaking of you guys being the best, thank you thank you thank you for your continued support for me and this fic!! it means so much to me to know that people are reading and enjoying what i'm doing here. 
> 
> apologies for the length of this chapter btw, it got away from me a bit.

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- "Spent Gladiator 2", The Mountain Goats_

Sam has never liked Las Vegas, Nevada. He hasn’t spent much time there, but he’s seen enough to know he doesn’t want to. It’s a fast, anxious city that seems to almost thrum alive with uncertain possibility. That thrumming, buzzing static tension is what he feels now, standing in a gas station parking lot on the outskirts of Vegas. I-15 lays minutes behind him, the isolated calm of the freeway a dim memory among the handful of patrons fast-walking across the pavement. There’s a divergence here, one they knew was coming since they’d hardly left Joshua Tree, and Sam was hoping to have more guidance by now. Their options have gone from three to two, sure, but knowing ‘not Oregon’ doesn’t help to decide ‘Utah or New Mexico’.

While somewhere behind him, G refuels the car, Sam walks into the gas station mini mart, the bell dinging softly above his head. He stops at the counter, pulls a picture up on his phone, the picture Jack had shown them when they’d asked to see what MacGyver looked like. The informal nature of the photo has served them well, and Sam flags the station cashier down, showing the bored looking girl the picture and flashing her an apologetic grin.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry,” he says, beginning the same story he’s given a dozen similar people in as many hours. “This is my friend’s son, Mac, he and some of his buddies took off and we haven’t been able to track him down. College kids, what are you gonna do?”

The girl, herself in her early, maybe mid-twenties, blinks at him, unimpressed. Sam swallows, shifting uncomfortably. This story worked better on people his age or older, people ready to roll their eyes and smile indulgently about the youths. The youths themselves… less receptive. Sam sighs and pushes the phone closer to her on the counter.

“Look, can you just tell me if you’ve seen him? His dad’s really worried, we all are.” Sam zooms in, indicating MacGyver’s smiling face.

The cashier leans over, peering at the screen and shaking her head. “Nope, sorry.”

Sam swivels the phone, swiping to the next picture and turning it back around to face her. “How about her? Have you seen her?”

Dalton had sent them the photo of the woman he’d said was named Nikki Carpenter, after a call where he’d said it was a ‘long, ugly story’. He hadn’t elaborated, and Sam hadn’t asked him to. There was no time, and besides which, this was complicated enough.

This time, looking at the second picture, a spark of recognition crosses her bored face and the girl nods emphatically.

“Yeah! Yeah, I remember her. Right at the beginning of my shift, she was here with some guy, I remember thinking, like, what the hell is a bombshell like that doing _trucking_ , y’know?”

“Trucking?” Finally, they’re getting somewhere. “A FedEx truck?”

“No.” She frowns at him. “Maersk. Why are you-”

“Thanks for your help, we appreciate it,” Sam says, cutting her off before she can ask any questions he doesn’t want to answer. Her sudden interest in the conversation is not helping him keep a low profile. Their hastily cobbled together cover story certainly wouldn’t hold up to much scrutiny, if at all, and thus far they’ve been immensely lucky that gas station and rest stop employees generally have no desire to get involved with the unclear missions of their stranger patrons.

Sam leaves the store quickly, walking over to G, who stands next to the car, leaning against it and frowning at nothing in particular.

“So,” he says, when he gets within earshot, “cashier didn’t see MacGyver, but she remembered Nikki Carpenter.”

“Blonde lady, ‘ugly story’?”

Sam nods.

“I talked to one of the car wash attendants, he had no idea what was going on,” G tells him. The look he shoots over Sam’s shoulder would’ve been easy to miss, subtle and brief, had Sam not both known G as long as he had and been trained as well as he was. “Showed him the picture, both of em, he hadn’t seen either of them.”

“Show anybody else the pictures?” Sam asks slowly, hoping G catches what he’s actually asking.

“Four o’clock.”

The reflection in the car window shows a woman standing behind Sam to his right, a younger man next to her, speaking to him but keeping her eyes on the pair. As Sam notices her, she seems to notice his noticing, and begins to walk over.

“Oh, great,” G mutters, pushing off the car and straightening up.

Sam and he stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the two of them approach. As they draw within a dozen feet, another young man and a young woman seem to materialize out of nowhere and double the number of people who come to a stop forming a small semi-circle around G and Sam.

“I don’t appreciate competition.” They are the first words out of any of the mouths of the newcomers, and they don’t mean a bit of sense to Sam.

He frowns, indicating at much when he responds, “Have we met?”

“I was given a guarantee by my client that this was an exclusive contract, and I don’t _appreciate_ competition I didn’t sign up for,” the older woman, definitely the ringleader here, asserts again.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” Sam says, still not understanding what she’s getting at.

“So you _aren’t_ here after the bounty?”

“No, we’re out helping a buddy of ours look for his boy. Dumb kid’s in college, decided to just take off and not tell anyone where he was going.” Sam holds his phone up again, pulling back up the same picture he’d just shown the cashier. “Seen him around?”

The response is not anything he was expecting, if anything could any longer _be_ expected, with how the day has been going. The woman looks sharply up from the phone to Sam, an instinctive shift of a hand by the girl next to her revealing what appears to be a taser, clipped to her belt.

“You’re lying to me.”

She’s right, of course, but the speed and strength of what is, from her, a baseless accusation raises Sam’s hackles.

“ _Excuse_ me?”

Before he can say anything else, she moves on. The younger woman’s hand now lays against the body of the taser, intention rife in her posture.

“I don’t know who you are, or what kind of game you’re playing, but I know that boy,” The leader indicates the picture she’d been shown, “and he’s many things, but dumb isn’t one of them. If you’re lookin’ for him, it isn’t because he just… ‘took off’. So. Start talking.”

Exchanging a look with G, Sam really isn’t sure what to do now. He doesn’t have the first idea who these people could be, or how they know MacGyver. Looking from his partner, to the quartet of strangers, back to G, Sam makes a decision.

“Alright,” he says to the woman. “Let’s talk.”

* * *

“Did you find anything?” Jack is far past the point of ‘hello’ and ‘how’s it going’, past identifying himself when he answers. If Sam or G is calling, it’s either very good news or very bad news.

So far, it hasn’t been very good news.

“We’ve run into some friends of yours. Name Colton mean anything to you?”

That name is one so far from Jack’s mind at that point that it takes him a moment to remember who it belongs to.

“You met the _Coltons_?” Jack is having a hard time processing this. “In _Vegas_?”

“So you do know these folks?”

Jack nods, scrubbing a hand down his face, then belatedly realizes Sam can’t see him. “Yeah. Yes, we’ve…” How to explain this without getting into the whole complicated story. “We’ve worked together.”

Sam goes on to explain what the Colton matriarch and her three children had thought was going on, the bounty they were right on the heels of that had initially brought them to confront Sam. They’d believed Sam and G to be competing bounty hunters, about to try and snipe the target they were so close to catching. Once it had been established what they were _actually_ doing in Nevada, Mama Colton had been disturbed by what she was told. Their bounty was to be delivered that day, the Coltons on the verge of catching the man in question.

“They’ve offered to help,” Sam is saying. “We don’t have anything more to go off here. We have to make the call now, Vernon or Roswell. The Coltons, their bounty takes them up towards Utah anyway, Provo I think, so they’ve offered to go that route when they deliver him. Look with us in Utah while we go down towards New Mexico. It’s your choice, it’s your teammate, but I think we should take them up on it.”

It’s a question Jack has been unspeakably frightened to confront. What would happen if they made it to Vegas and the trail died there. Splitting up Sam and G wasn’t a viable option, and there’s no time to sit in place and poke around much longer. It was always understood that Las Vegas was the point of divergence, and now, with the choice in front of them, Jack feels petrified. Whichever way they choose to go, there is an equal chance Mac is the other way, losing too many hours to regain in backtracking.

“So, what’s your call?” Sam’s question breaks into Jack’s thought, into the haze of frozen indecision. “We can’t be two places at once.”

Jack swallows hard. He looks back at Riley, at Patti, respectively staring at a computer screen and the map. He glances over to the hallway Bozer had disappeared down, dispatched to get some rest. In the space between looking inside and looking back towards an indeterminate spot of skyline, the decision is made.

“Go to Roswell.”

Sam promises to check in as soon as they have anything new, and the call ends. Jack is left standing outside with a silent phone and his own regret. The moment he’d given the order, made that choice, he’d been struck as though physically by the overpowering sense that he’d chosen wrong, and by sending Sam and G to New Mexico, he’s damned Mac. But, really, it hadn’t been much of a choice at all. What other option had there been?

“Ri,” he says quietly when he walks up to her, still at her place at the kitchen island.

Riley looks up and doesn’t verbally answer. The look on his face must be grim, if it’s rendered her silent. She’s not usually one to wait expectantly for instructions. She’s like Mac that way, always one, two, five steps ahead of Jack when it came to the plan.

“Focus your attention on the New Mexico route,” he tells her, hyperaware as well of Patti’s attention on him. “We’ve got some more help, Sam and G ran into the Coltons.”

“The _Coltons_ ,” Riley repeats, voice flat disbelief. Patti doesn’t register comprehension of the name at all, which Jack supposes is fair. She’d been long gone by the time they’d had their misadventure with the Coltons.

“Bounty hunters,” he clarifies to her, proceeding to give the same explanation he’d just given Sam. “We worked together. It’s a long story.”

“And they’re going to help us?” It doesn’t seem much like Riley believes what she’s hearing. “Why?”

“Sam didn’t say and I didn’t ask.” Looking a gift horse in the mouth  is the last thing on Jack’s mind at this point. “If they’ve got an agenda, we can sort that out after we’ve found Mac. The point is, their bounty delivery is taking them to Provo anyway, it’s right near Vernon in Utah, and they’ve agreed to help us once that’s taken care of. So we’re gonna focus on New Mexico. Sam and G are already driving that direction, so I need you, Ri, I need all your brains and your satellites or whatever focused on the Roswell base.”

Riley looks for a moment like she’s going to push it. She looks like she wants to ask questions - about the timeline, about whether they could trust the Coltons to help, about whether waiting on them to take care of a bounty was too long if Mac was indeed in Utah. Jack meets her eyes steadily, and though his face is carefully schooled to betray none of it, he’s silently begging her not to ask. There’s barely enough confidence in him to convince himself, never mind anyone else, and he’s not sure how well his veneer of sure leadership will hold up to scrutiny.

Whether Riley has found what she was looking for or merely knew asking wouldn’t give her the answer she wanted to hear. Jack doesn’t know. Whatever the reason for how she nods and looks away, Jack is glad for it. He looks away too, an absent, aimless sweep of his eyes around the room alighting on an observer he hadn’t noticed when giving the explanation of their revised plan.

Bozer stands against the wall, just inside the room, arms folded across his chest and an exhausted look on his face. However much rest he’d actually gotten, Jack isn’t sure, and it doesn’t seem to have helped. At least he won’t have to go over the news again. One time through a plan he barely believes in is already more than enough.

Tearing his eyes away from where Bozer is looking at him like he’s got answers he doesn’t have, Jack walks to where Patti stands with the map they’ve been deliberating on. The starred areas in Utah and New Mexico seem to mock Jack with their directionless presence, nothing on the depiction of hills and highways indicating which way was the right one, if he had sent Sam and G towards Mac or even farther away. He stares at the marker lines so hard they start to blur, only looking up when a sound across the room catches his attention.

It’s Bozer, and he’s digging around in the same closet he’d pulled the maps from to begin with. Riley and Patti don’t seem to have noticed, focused on other things. Jack watches him rummage until he finds what he’s looking for, pulling out a black box that resembles the kind of tackle box fishermen use, but bigger. He carries the box over to the coffee table in the living room and sets it down, sitting on the couch in front of it and undoing the latches. It’s hard to see what is in the box, what Bozer is staring at so intently, and Jack steps away from the kitchen island. He squints at where Bozer’s hands have disappeared into the box, trying to make out what he’s fussing with.

The space of the coffee table on either side of the box begins to fill up with things Bozer has taken out and laid aside. There are what looks like rolls of gauze, a pen light, some strangely shaped scissors wrapped in plastic… It’s a first-aid kit. An industrial first-aid kit, filled with more complicated equipment than Jack has seen outside of an ambulance or the Phoenix medical bay.

By now Patti has noticed this as well, Jack sensing her presence at his side, and he looks at her. She’s frowning at him, silently asking a question he doesn’t know the answer to. He shrugs. Riley is the last one to notice, the shift in her attention indicated by the sounds of her keyboard slowing then stopping entirely. Jack glances over his shoulder at her, back to Patti, then out to Bozer again. He clears his throat, but Bozer doesn’t look up. Whether he’s too focused on what he’s doing to hear, or ignoring it on purpose, Jack doesn’t know.

“Hey, Bozer,” he calls lightly. This time Bozer acknowledges the sound, looking up at him briefly before looking back down at a bottle of antiseptic he’d been turning over and over in his hands, searching for something on the label. “What’re you doing, kid?”

“I’m checking expiration dates. Just to be safe,” Bozer mutters, barely loud enough for Jack to hear. It’s an answer that factually addresses the literal wording of Jack’s question, but provides him with no real information as to what he he had actually been asking. It was a very Mac way to answer, and Jack has a distracted moment where he fleetingly wonders which one of them had started doing that first, who had picked it up from who.

“Bozer,” Jack repeats. He steps further into the living room, leaving Patti and Riley silent behind him. “What’s with the kit, dude, did you join an apocalypse preppers group or something?”

Bozer’s hands still, a suture kit held inches above the surface of the coffee table. He looks uncomfortable, hesitating before he speaks.

“I’m going over my kit, just checking everything.” He lets out a little sigh, shifting on the couch. Jack doesn’t push; Bozer’s behavior indicates he already knows that isn’t enough, that more of an explanation is required to make sense of this. “I… I started taking classes. First it was just Red Cross certification, CPR and stuff. But I wanted to know more, be able to do more, so… I started going to this class, for EMTs and Search and Rescue people, y’know? They teach a lot more complicated stuff than what I could find at the YMCA. And I didn’t tell anybody,” he continues, addressing another piece of the puzzle, “because I wasn’t sure I could do it. School, classes, tests, that’s never been my thing. I’ve never been great at it when I wasn’t interested enough in what was going on, if I didn’t care enough to see what the point was. I wanted to- The first round of certification and stuff is next month. I wanted to wait until I passed, then I was gonna tell you guys.”

Jack blinks, trying in the void of awkward silence to process what he’s just been told. It’s not often, of late, that he finds something out about one of his teammates that truly, honestly surprises him, and this is the third major shock of the last day or so, following Mac’s letters from his ‘dad’ and Patti’s arrival. This one is, of course, much less alarming, but it is, to him at least, no less confusing.

“Planning a change in career?” he asks when he finds his voice, grasping at an explanation. Bozer puts the suture kit down and turns to face him. The expression on the young man’s face is serious, determined and a little anxious, nothing resembling his usual demeanor. Of course, nothing in their present circumstances lends itself to ‘usual’ anything.

“There have been a lot of close calls,” Bozer says, eyes flicking over Patti and Riley before settling back on Jack. “Things go bad on missions, people get hurt, _bad_. You get to hospitals, back to Phoenix medical, as soon as you can, but- Mac’s told me himself, there have been a _lot_ of close calls. Maybe… Maybe there’s a way some of those calls could’ve been a little less close, y’know? Maybe this way I can make sure there aren’t as many close calls anymore.”

“Oh.” Jack’s reply is forced out around the lump in his throat, the fierce pride-and-something-else that threatens to burst out of his chest. “Oh.”

Without waiting for any other response, maybe afraid of what that response might be, Bozer turns back around, begins organizing the contents of the kit. Jack watches him, still unable to place exactly what the feeling evoked by Bozer’s explanation is. There’s a slight disturbance in the air beside him, and he turns to see Patti, nodding.

Jack raises an eyebrow at her. “What?”

“He was a smart hire, that one.”

“Bozer?” It’s not that Jack disagrees, he agrees wholeheartedly in fact, but Patti’s motivations for saying so elude him. “How do you mean?”

“We have scouting programs, we recruit from the best of the best, and even then we don’t get the kind of instincts and potential he’s shown very often. Aptitude can’t be taught, and he keeps showing us he has it.”

Thinking back on the Netherlands, to Bozer’s calamitous first real mission, Jack has to agree. Circumstance may have put Bozer in their path when he otherwise wouldn’t have ended up there in a million years, but the results were, so far, proving positive. It was becoming more and more clear that sometimes, not even the most careful cultivation and recruitment could avoid turning up bad apples, and if they were going to find some of their best people in prison or by accident, well, so be it.

The thought of unconventional help brings Jack to the Coltons, the stroke of luck that allowed them to direct their focus one way while not leaving the other direction completely unexplored. He turns and walks back to the map, peering at the Utah area until he locates the labels he’s looking for.

Provo to the Vernon area. It’s not a long distance, barely sixty or so miles, but it makes him nervous nonetheless, to think of Mac possibly stuck there, waiting to be rescued until the Coltons finish delivering a bounty.

“The Coltons better be quick with that mark,” he mutters, tracing a line from Provo to Vernon with a finger that squeaks across a laminated surface.

“Bounty hunters,” Patti comments, and Jack glances up at her.

“Yeah. They’re good, like I said, we’ve... worked with them before, I just hope that, if he is in Utah, they’re not too late.”

“You keep saying that.” Patti tilts her head to the side, studying him. “‘Too late’. You said yourself, they wanted him alive.”

It’s true, Matty had been right when she’d said that to him, right in the beginning of this nightmare. If they’d wanted him dead, they’d never have bothered with tricks, no kidnapping, no letters meant to lead them down a wrong road to a dead end. Riley and Bozer would’ve come home to find Mac’s body on the ground instead of a broken cellphone. But even so…

“Yeah, they wanted him alive.” Jack shakes his head, finger slipping off the star near Vernon, now pointing to some empty, featureless section of desert not even worth naming on the map. “You can’t get information from a dead guy, but they’re not gonna get anything from him alive either. There’s only so long he can not tell them what they want to know before they’re gonna get tired of asking.”

It’s a grim assertion, and Patti nods. Riley’s keyboard stop-starts in the only indication that she’s hearing what they’re saying, how she feels at that statement betrayed by the way her fingers stutter. Mac might be alive for now, but they’re on a clock, a clock they don’t know the countdown settings of, how long before they’ve run out of time.

Jack looks at his hand set on the Utah section of the map, places the other over New Mexico, and judges the distance between them.

Vernon or Roswell.

Vernon or Roswell.

Vernon or Roswell.

* * *

The sound of an air horn shatters the haze of sleep that had begun to fall over Mac’s exhausted, pained mind, reminding him of the one consistency he’s found in his tumultuous, uncertain surroundings. No sleeping. He’d been introduced to that one early, the brutal noise that would blast the air whenever he started to drift, his captors destroying any chance at rest he may have had.

Mac’s stay in the generic, warehouse-like building he’s been brought to has been, overall, just as chaotic, disorienting, and painful as the sound of the air horn itself. He’d predicted the questions, predicted the punishment that would follow not answering them. The fists hadn’t surprised him, nor had the way they’d left the handcuffs on, or the gun pressed to his forehead, only the continued suffering that followed the pull of the trigger proving it had never been loaded. None of that was unexpected, none of it confusing.

What had been unexpected, confusing, what _had_ surprised him, was the questions themselves, the reasons he hadn’t answered any of them. Mac had never planned to answer a single question they’d asked.

“How far has your investigation into the Organzation gone?”

"I don't know."

He wasn’t going to tell them.

"How many moles have you discovered so far?"

"I don't know."

He wouldn't tell them, no matter what they’d do to him when he didn’t.

“Who knows about Patricia Thornton? Is Matty Webber aware of Chrysalis’s true identity?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. _God_ , _stop_ , I don’t _know. I don’t know_.”

He just hadn’t been expecting to not know the answers at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER END NOTES: brief, mildly descriptive torture in the last segment


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all, y'all, i am sooooo sorry this is so late. i had finals all week last week and then my last couple of shifts at my current job, so it was. a bit of a rocky week there, but now i'm out for the semester and i'm gonna be trained in at the new job soon!! 
> 
> again, sorry for the lateness, thank you all so much for your continued support for this fic, and i hope you'll let me know how you're liking it!

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- The Mountain Goats, "Spent Gladiator 2"_

“New _freakin’_ Mexico!”

The shout from the kitchen island is the first noise containing any kind of excitement or joy that’s been heard inside the house since before the ill-fated trip to see _The Dark Crystal_. It draws the attention of all present, everyone turning to face Riley, who sits with her hands thrown triumphantly in the air, staring at her computer screen with a fierce expression. She looks up and sees the trio of identical raised-eyebrow looks being directed at her, and grins. It probably looks a little manic, but Riley feels a little manic right now. Whether caffeine is the culprit or the elation of what she’s just discovered is the cause of the giddy, buzzing feeling, she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care.

“Look,” she says, swiveling the computer around and jabbing a finger at the screen. “This is from a rest stop along Interstate 40, they’ve left the 15, they’d still be _on it_ if they were going to Utah, it’s New _freaking_ Mexico. They’re taking Mac to Roswell. _Look_.”

They do, Jack, Bozer, and Patti crowding around the image she’s pointing to.

“It’s Nikki,” she says, indicating it with her finger. It’s a grainy capture from a rest stop camera but it’s distinctly Nikki, a three-quarters view of her face, blonde hair obscuring the rest. “She thinks we still don’t know about her, so she got sloppy, and she messed up.”

The elation of finally having some amount of actionable information is a heady feeling. Riley’s finger stays where it is, jabbing at the image of Nikki on the screen. Pixels displace where her nail makes contact with the display and she winces, pulling her hand away but shaking the computer a little to punctuate her point.

“We’ve got her,” Riley says fiercely. “And if we’ve got _her_ , we’ve got _him_.”

Jack looks from the screen up to her, then reaches out. His hand clasps her cheek momentarily, falling to her shoulder and squeezing once, hard. He then turns quickly to walk away from the kitchen island, phone already halfway to his ear, but the look in his eye and the ghost of the approving touch are hard to shake, and Riley’s throat feels tight. Pride and relief and something else tear at each other inside her chest as she turns the computer back around and stares at the picture of Nikki.

 _You lose_ , she thinks. _We’re going to find him, and he’s coming home safe, and you fucking_ lose.

Patti has stepped away as well, bent once more over the map, and Jack in the background talks to Sam on the phone, but Bozer remains where he is, standing next to Riley and looking at the screen. He’s frowning intently, and the look he’s wearing now reminds her of how he’d looked outside before, cleaning up broken pieces of gorilla glass and sporadic drops of blood.

“What?” she asks, when the temptation to distract from her own feelings about how close they are becomes too great. “What’cha thinking, Bozer?”

“I…” He starts and trails off after just the first word, shaking his head and glancing away from the screen. “You wanna know the stupidest thing that’s been bothering me about this?”

Riley gestures for him to continue, then props her elbows on the island, leaning against the granite and waiting for whatever it is he’s going to say. It takes him more than just a moment, leaning on the counter himself, looking from the dark stone, to the picture of Nikki, and back down at his own hands. He picks at the skin around his thumbnail, gives one empty laugh, and looks up to Riley.

“I always had a bad feeling about her,” Bozer says, and his voice has an odd quality to it.

“Nikki?” asks Riley, despite already knowing the answer.

“Yeah.” He nods, glancing back to the woman on the screen. “Nikki. Something about her seemed off, I had a bad feeling, but I never… I never said anything. I wanted him to be happy, y’know? And it wasn’t like she ever did anything to prove me right. I just tried to ignore it, thought I was seeing things, being protective or whatever, so I just… Put it out of my mind. Feel pretty stupid about that now.”

“Well, you were right, I guess,” Riley mutters, then winces. She regrets having said it, and glances quickly over at Bozer to see what sort of effect the words are going to have. To her relief, he smiles. It’s bitter and there’s that same guilty look as before behind it, but it’s a smile.

“Guess I was.” Bozer shakes his head. “Just wish I’d _said_ something. Maybe if I had, then-”

“Nope,” Riley cuts him off before he can finish, “no. I’m gonna stop you there. I could say the same thing about me, because I came in with new eyes, and I didn’t see it either. Mac didn’t see it. _Jack_ didn’t see it. And, like, no. If you’d said something way in the beginning, if you’d made him come to the freaking movie with us, it wouldn’t have stopped this. Nobody and nothing could’ve stopped this but the people who did it. We couldn’t’ve stopped it then, but we can save him _now_. That’s what we should focus on. Okay?”

Bozer answers her with a wordless nod. Riley, still bolstered by the humming success of finding the security cam footage of Nikki, nods back. It’s a firm, decisive dip of her chin, contrasted to Bozer’s uncertain agreement. Despite everything, Riley is feeling hopeful. They’re so close now, they know where they’re headed, and when she switches programs on her computer, she sees the blinking green light of G and Sam’s car closing in on the red-flagged city of Roswell, New Mexico. So close. They’re _so close_.

It almost feels to Riley like she could reach into the screen and pull Mac out. Pluck him from the pixelated negative space to the South and West of Roswell, cut out the middleman and bring him home herself. It’s a fleeting thought and she shakes her head to dispel it, focusing on dropping a digital pin on the location of the rest stop they’d got the picture of Nikki from.

She reaches absently next to her, the backs of her fingers coming into contact with the cold side of the can leaving beads of condensation on the counter. Coffee stopped cutting it at some point and she’d grabbed an energy drink, which she takes a swallow of now, grimacing at the sharp, artificial taste. Out of the corner of her eye, Riley sees Bozer give her what she reads to be some kind of concerned look, probably due to the volume of caffeine she’s taken in since fatigue really started weighing on her, and she rolls her eyes.

It’ll be fine. She just needs to stay awake until Mac is home. It’ll be _fine_.

* * *

Mac has lost track of time. He could have been here in this featureless, empty room for hours, days, he has no way to know how long has passed. His captors have seemed to decide the best angle from which to approach this interrogation is to overwhelm him into submission, launching a constant onslaught of stimuli on his already fried senses. The concussion he’d arrived with, along with his throbbing shoulders, face, and hand, have stripped away his defenses, leaving him uncharacteristically vulnerable to these attacks.

Amid the continuing stream of the same questions Mac still doesn’t know the answers to, punctuated by fists to his torso and blasts of the air horn every time he starts to drift, the gun goes off three more times. The last time it’s loaded, a bullet intentionally passing by his head to blow chunks out of the wall. Bits of material scatter through the air hard enough to hit him, even those glancing impacts enough to ratchet up the threshold of the pain he’s experiencing. It’s a constant battle to think at all, let alone clearly.

Despite not knowing how long he’s been in their hands, it’s been long enough that Mac is starting to get worried. Not for himself, that ship sailed quite some time ago, but for his team. This is not a situation alien to him. This is not the first time Mac has been held captive and hurt, and though the nature of their answerless questions is disconcerting and scary, these circumstances on the whole are not unfamiliar. However, it’s drug on long enough that by now if not an out-and-out rescue, Mac should’ve gotten at least some indication that his team knows where he is and is working on getting him out.

So far, though, nothing. It’s been too long for that not to be an indication of something having gone very, very wrong. It’s been long enough that a fear is mounting in Mac’s scattered, disoriented head that he may not be the only one in danger here.

If they’re not here, if Jack hasn’t come to get him by now, something has happened. And if they’re in trouble, then Mac needs to get to them so he can help. Now, so much more than before, he needs to get _out_ . And if they’re in trouble, if Jack is in so much trouble he isn’t _here_ , isn’t pulling Mac out of the fire for the thousandth time, he’s going to have to rely on himself to get out.

Gritting his teeth and ignoring the spike of pain that sends through his damaged cheek, Mac closes his eyes and tries to concentrate, to get past the barrage of noise and hurt and _think_ . The air horn sounds again, a piercing shriek that sends his eyes flying open and forces a gasp out of shocked lungs. _I wasn’t sleeping_ , he wants to scream at them. _I wasn’t falling asleep, I wasn't_.

The plan he comes up with is not his most comprehensive or foolproof. But there is a plan, one he's pieced together as best he can given the circumstances, and Mac is determined to get out of here at the first opportunity. The people interrogating him have never been more than two or three at once, and they’ve been exiting the room periodically, leaving him alone for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time. He watches them closely, breathing in shallow, slow breaths to try and calm down, center himself and pull his training to the forefront.

Mac reminds himself, coughing through a blow to his ribs, that he’s a professional. He knows how to do this. He’s pulled harder escapes than this. Ignoring the little voice reminding him that he’d had backup then, Mac does his best to concentrate.

As the last aftershocks of that punch fade, Mac sees his chance. For the life of him, he doesn’t know how he manages to get across the room in this state, but when he gets there, the door is open, and he’s halfway down the hall before it’s barely registered that he’s left.

Unfortunately, halfway down the hall is as far as he gets. A hand clamps down on his shoulder, ripping backwards and sending Mac sprawling to the floor. He just manages to twist and avoid cracking his wounded head off the concrete floor, and as it stands, the impact still manages to leave him dazed and gasping, barely aware of what’s happening around him. As he’s dragged back to the room he’d only barely made it out of, Mac is too stunned to so much as think - perhaps a blessing, after all, it may have been the only thing to save him from imagining what the consequences would be for his failure.

* * *

“No, I know,” G is saying in the passenger seat of the rental car as Sam drives, continuing to fulfill his adopted role as communications liaison as well as navigator, “and I promise we’re gonna call you as soon as we’ve got anything. Yeah. _I promise_. Sure.” He hangs up and looks at Sam, shaking his head.

“They have updates?”

“Nah,” G says, a word encased in a sigh. “They’re just going nuts back there, y’know, stir crazy, now that we know where he’s probably at. It’s just got that much harder not to charge out and get him themselves. Dalton’s practically crawling up the walls.”

Sam tilts his chin, acknowledging the situation the Phoenix team is trapped in. G is right, it must have gotten measurably harder to hold back and abide by the ruling of the powers that be once there was a narrowed destination, once this was a proper rescue mission and not a frustratingly directionless search and rescue. It has certainly leant a sense of urgency to their drive, and their emotional attachment to the object of their mission is at a minimum, especially compared to the tight, worried voice he keeps hearing on the other end of G’s frequent phone calls, the rest of that team waiting back in Los Angeles.

“So, let’s rerun the plan,” Sam says after a while, seeing a sign indicating they were drawing close to their destination. A collaboration between their technical analysts and Riley Davis involving topographical maps and depth surveys has provided them with a specific location. What was supposed to be an empty stretch of desert twenty minutes outside of Roswell was actually a large, falsely-permitted generic warehouse building, void of distinguishable features, words, or logos anywhere they could find. It had to be there they were headed, and they were about an hour out now.

“Get in, get MacGyver, get out,” G intones like they’ve gone over this a dozen times, which they basically have. “Don’t be seen, don’t be heard. It’s not much of a plan.”

“I know.” Sam shakes his head and wishes he had some sort of turn to make, some directions to follow, anything but continuing straight on down the same road. “At least it’s straightforward.”

And it was. Straightforward. The plan, the mission, was not about anything more than simply, as G put it, ‘get in, get MacGyver, get out’. They were not focused on the Organization, on gathering information or taking down bad guys. That could wait, and there were people with far more intel than them to do it. Right now, all they had to do was a rescue.

The rest of the drive passes in a stiff silence, both agents preparing themselves for the extraction. Sam parks the car behind the last ridge before the buildings they’re headed for, counting on the dying light casting shadows everywhere to shield their approach from anyone who might happen to look. G speaks one last time on the phone with Dalton, whose jangling nerves Sam can feel all the way from California, and they’re on their way, approaching by foot.

Getting into the building is easier and less eventful than he had expected, which makes Sam nervous. They only encounter two members of the Organization as they carefully creep down the hall, peering into rooms to check for MacGyver. Both of them are dispatched quickly, left unconscious in the nearest room as they continue further into the converted warehouse. It’s a loud, abrupt sound from down the hall that catches their attention, something like a siren but only coming from one room. One short blast, followed by an angry voice. Sam and G look at each other, then book it the rest of the way down the hall.

The man inside the room is taken by surprise when they burst in the door, air horn dropping from his hand and rolling across the room. The sight of it sends a nauseated jolt through Sam’s gut. G takes care of the man who’d been holding it while Sam focuses on the object of their search, handcuffed to a pipe across the room.

He doesn’t look much like the picture Dalton gave them, right now, with his battered appearance and the wild, raw look of pain and fear on his face, but there’s no mistaking who that is. It’s Angus MacGyver, and he looks awful. Sam snaps his fingers, getting G’s attention, gesturing towards the boy without looking away.

“See if you can find the key to the cuffs on the guy you dropped,” he says quietly, directed back at his partner, before refocusing on the task at hand.

MacGyver is watching with wide eyes as Sam approaches, quick pants of breath hitching his shoulders rapidly up and down. There’s blood in his blond hair, an deep bruise darkening on the side of his face with an untreated cut at the center. This, along with a black eye, a split lip, and Sam approaches slowly, and when he gets within arm’s reach, MacGyver pushes back into the pipe behind him, trying to get away. Of course he is - they’ve never met, and the guy’s just been beaten half to death. Of course he’s afraid.

“It’s alright,” Sam says gently, holding his hands up, palms out, trying to signify peace. “We’re here to help. My name is Sam.” A tap on his shoulder, and G passes him the key, which Sam takes, and turns back. “I’m just gonna get you out of those cuffs, okay?”

MacGyver doesn’t say anything. Sam moves around to the side, standing at an awkward angle to get at the cuffs behind the pipe. He frowns at them, taking in the angle, the rigid link between the bracelets, the torn skin where the metal has bit into the kid’s wrists. Put on too tight on purpose, to keep him from slipping them. Sam grits his teeth, swallowing down the anger that’s been rising in his chest since he first saw the amount of damage that’s been done to this young man.

“Easy,” Sam mutters as he works the cuffs off, doing his best not to cause any more harm. One of MacGyver’s hands seems to be hurt beyond just what the cuffs have caused, ugly bruising mottling the back in a way that makes Sam wonder if something might be broken. “It’s gonna be alright. Easy.”

“Who are you?” MacGyver asks. His voice is hoarse and it makes Sam’s throat hurt just to listen to him. “Wh- _Who_ are you?”

“My name is Sam Hanna,” he says, trying to sound as steady and non-threatening as possible. “I work for NCIS. This is my partner, Callen. We’re… We’re friends of Jack Dalton’s. We’re working with him, we’re here to get you and bring you home.”

With a tiny shake of his head, MacGyver takes a step away, to the side as he’s already as far back against the wall as he can get.

“I don’t…” Another head-shake, one that causes Sam to wince because of the gash it exposes behind his ear, the source of the blood in his hair. “I don’t know you.”

Before Sam can answer, there’s a shout from down the hall signalling that someone’s stumbled upon the incapacitated Organization lackeys they’d left in one of the empty rooms. He whips around to look at G, who wears the same ‘oh _no_ ’ look, and they both run out into the hall.

It’s only one person, radio raised halfway to his mouth about ready to sound the alarm but unable to get the message out before G gets to him. Seeing as there’s only one of them, and there’s another pressing issue at hand, Sam leaves him to deal with that, and turns back to the room they’d left MacGyver in. When he gets to the doorway though, he freezes there and stays frozen until G gets back.

“What?” G asks, apprehension in his voice. “What’s happened?”

Wordlessly, Sam steps aside to reveal the room. The room which is now completely empty.

MacGyver is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: mildly descriptive torture in middle segment, major character injury in middle and third segments


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's up everybody!! happy beginning of summer, at least where i'm at! 
> 
> at the risk of sounding like a broken record, thanks so much for sticking with this project of mine, and for your wonderful comments. 
> 
> anyhow, i hope you enjoy the new chapter, as we're finally closing in on our wayward blond! so sorry for the length of it, it got a little carried away from me asdljfks

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- The Mountain Goats, "Spent Gladiator 2"_

When Jack’s phone rings, it doesn’t do much to break the tension. Instead, it seems to ratchet it up even higher, to a completely unbearable level.

“Put it on speaker,” Riley says when he picks it up off the counter. After a moment of hesitation, he does, holding the phone up in front of him.

“You get him?” Jack asks, and the beat of empty, static silence from the phone is enough to freeze Riley’s breath in her lungs, her chest feeling suddenly tight.

“Well.” The voice that eventually comes from the other end of the call is slow and stiff, like he doesn’t want to answer that question, but has no other option. “Not exactly.”

Riley exchanges a look with Bozer, who wears an expression that she’d imagine is mirrored on her own face, wide eyed and freaked out by what that could possibly mean. She looks from Bozer to the phone in Jack’s hand, then stares at it, waiting for an explanation.

“ _Callen. Sam_.” Jack grinds the names out with exactly as much agitated frustration as Riley is currently experiencing. “What the _hell_ do you mean _‘not exactly’_? How can you _not exactly_ have him?”

“I mean we _did_ have him and now we _don’t_.”

“ _Explain_.”

The good news, as far as Riley can tell, is that Mac is no longer in the hands of the people who took him, which means they’re no longer in reach of being able to hurt him. On the other hand, there’s the bad news. While they know the one place Mac isn’t, they have no idea where he is, and don’t know where to start looking.

Under other circumstances, Riley might be proud. She might look at Mac’s decision to take off the moment Sam and Callen turned their backs on him and laugh, fist bump him, and crack a joke about stranger danger. However, for her to do that, Mac would have to be within fist bumping distance, which he obviously isn’t. He’s out there somewhere in New Mexico, as they’ve just finished hearing the NCIS agents explain to them.

“So,” Sam says over the speaker of the phone still held up in Jack’s hand, “we’re back at square one.”

“Well, how did he look? Did he look okay?” Jack’s question has an undeniable tone of anxiety. His voice has gone up an octave and the question makes Riley nervous. She almost doesn’t want them to answer. Mac is obviously mobile, but beyond that, she has no idea how bad the damage might be, and until they tell her, she doesn’t have to know.

“Not, uh, not-”

“Do _not_ tell me ‘not exactly’, I don’t ever want to hear the words _not exactly_ again. Tell me, flat out, when you saw Mac, did he look _okay_?” As he keeps going, Jack’s voice gets louder until he’s practically shouting the question at the impassive piece of technology that is much less satisfying to demand information from than an actual human person. Given their present situation, Riley thinks they’ll probably forgive him for the yelling.

Another beat of silence, and Riley can imagine Sam and Callen looking at each other over their end of the call, nonverbally debating how much to disclose, how much to keep to themselves. It starts her brain off down a path she doesn’t want it to go down, imagining all manner of things that would be bad enough for that extended pause, that unseen, unheard debate of whether or not they’re going to be able to handle it. Just when she’s to the point of being pretty sure she’s never going to be able to sleep again without the horror movie worthy imagery she’s conjuring making itself present, it’s Callen’s voice this time that cuts her off.

“No.” Riley’s previous thought about the gracious reception of the yelling is maybe off the mark, given the slight edge of an irritated snap in his words. “The short answer is no, and the longer answer is _hell_ no. Kid looked like he’d been beat half to death when we found him. He was cut from the handcuffs, and he’d been clocked in the head pretty bad if all the blood in his hair was any hint. Pretty sure they were keeping him awake using an air horn. And there was a bullet hole in the wall but, if it helps, he didn’t look shot.”

 _If it helps_? Riley thinks at the same time Bozer says, “If it _helps_?”

There’s a low buzz of inaudible conversation on Sam and Callen’s end of the line, a muffled thump like somebody got whacked in the shoulder, and Callen’s voice returns, without the edge to it this time.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have- Sorry. You asked, and... There it is. He didn’t look okay.”

Knowing is not much better than wondering. The thousand scenarios flickering one by one through Riley’s mind have narrowed down to a single actuality, and it’s equidistant from the best and worst things she had imagined. On one hand, he’s not bleeding to death in the dust somewhere, bullet-riddled and barely breathing. On the other hand, nor is he fine, a little scuffed but not much worse for wear. It’s both more and less dire than she thought, and it’s sending Riley’s heart ping-ponging around in her ribcage. She looks to Jack and, for once, what she sees doesn’t do anything to anchor her.

Jack’s face is blank. Not angry, not scared, not any of the hundred things it should be, nothing. Just… blank. A tremor runs through the hand holding the phone and he shakes his head, looking sharply away from his own traitorous hand and shoving the device at Patti. She takes it without question or objection, and her face betrays no surprise, no confusion. Riley wishes she could say the same for herself.

“I need a- I need a _minute_ ,” he mutters after an unsettled moment where his eyes leap from focus to focus, looking everywhere but at Riley, Patti, or Bozer.

Jack walks away from the island to the edge of the room where he stops, shoulders visibly rising and falling at intervals too regular, too artificial to be anything but deliberate and controlled. He’s holding himself so rigidly it’s making Riley’s back hurt just to look at him. He glances back at them, and Riley thinks he’s going to return, take the phone back and continue speaking to Callen. Except that when he looks at them, his carefully measured breathing stutters and instead he turns swiftly away, walking in quick, long strides until he’s out of eyesight.

Riley watches until he’s gone and looks back to the other two, hoping to find something there that’s more reassuring than Jack abruptly removing himself from their immediate presence. Bozer looks a mess, and Patti just looks like a consummate professional, and Riley can’t find anything reassuring about either of those options. So she closes her eyes and counts to ten and tries to focus on the positive. Mac might be MIA, _again_ , but he’s not with the Organization. Mac might be hurt ( _again_ ) but he’s not still _being_ hurt and that’s what she’s going to keep reminding herself.

Mac is smart. Mac is resourceful. He’s out of their hands, and he’s going to be fine.

When Riley opens her eyes again, she sees Jack, coming back into the room with a look of renewed determination on his face. His eyes are a little red, but the tremor is gone, and when he sees her, he gives her a small nod. It doesn’t make everything better, it doesn’t erase all the heavy nausea churning in Riley’s gut, but it helps.

“Alright,” Jack says, holding out his hand. Patti passes the phone back to him, and they exchange a nod of their own when she does. “Callen, Sam, I’m back.”

Thankfully, they don’t comment on his absence, moving directly to the point.

“So, what do we do now?” Sam asks.

“Well if he’s gotten away and he’s off on his own, he’s coming home,” Jack says, in the same tone with which one says ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’, a guarantee with no question as to its legitimacy. “He’s on his way home, and if anybody can get from New Mexico to California alone and concussed it’s Mac. We know where he’s headed, we’ll be waiting when he gets here. There’s nothing left for you two to do but get on a plane and head back. We appreciate your help, but there’s no need to keep chasing him if he’s just headed home.”

“Makes sense,” Sam agrees, and Riley has to as well. She listens absently to the rest of the conversation, not really processing much, if any of it, having re-opened her computer.

There might be nothing left for Sam and Callen to do, but there is something she can do. Now that they know where he’s starting and where he’s headed, it shouldn’t be too difficult to track his progress, to keep an eye on Mac as he crosses the span of desert and cities separating Los Angeles from Roswell, especially if he’s disoriented and making mistakes. This way, she can make sure nothing happens along the way.

If the trail suddenly disappears, indicating he’s been grabbed again, she can alert the others immediately to re-begin their search. If someone matching his description turned up at an Emergency Room, should his injuries be more severe than they’d appeared to Sam and Callen, Riley can have them on the next flight out. If, god forbid, he just collapses on the side of the road, Riley is going to find out and get him help.

It’s as she’s in the middle of her first step, laying out the most probable routes Mac is going to take to get home, that Riley is interrupted. The quiet clearing of a throat pulls her attention away from her digital landscape and she looks over to see Jack, standing next to her with an expectant look on his face.

“What?” Riley asks. Something about that look has put her immediately on the defensive, and she crosses her arms, staring back at him with an expression just this side of a glare.

“It’s late,” Jack says quietly. His voice is gentle but serious, and it makes her bristle, because she knows what he’s about to say. Even before he continues speaking, Riley is already shaking her head. “You’re exhausted. You need to rest.”

“You’re right,” she says, shouldering past him and walking over to the fridge. “I _am_ exhausted.” The agreement was obviously not something Jack was expecting, and not directed at the part he’d wanted it to be.

“Riley,” he says after her, frustration seeping into his voice. She ignores him, instead opening what she’s always thought was the world’s ugliest fridge and pulling another energy drink out.

Can in hand, damp aluminum cold enough that it’s making her fingers hurt, Riley hops back up on her stool and focuses on her screen. She clicks a few keys, pops the tab on the energy drink, and very pointedly doesn’t look at Jack.

“Riley,” he starts again, “you need to-”

“I _can’t_ ,” she snaps, lowering the lid of her laptop and finally meeting his eyes. “I can’t _rest_ , Jack, because right now I’m _all_ he’s got.”

Her words sound unnaturally harsh as they crack out, loud and just a tinge hysterical. Jack’s face has gone in a heartbeat from worried frustration to worried confusion. He frowns lightly and stays silent, letting Riley continue at her own pace. She looks from him to Bozer, who sits across the island, also silent and waiting for her explanation, and back again.

“I…” Riley trails off, searching for the words with which to measure the weight she’s carrying, the responsibility she’s shouldered alone. “He’s not here. He isn’t here with us, and you’re not there with him, so... There’s always someone there to catch him. But if Mac falls right now, there’s nobody to catch him, no net. I’m the last line of defense. If I don’t watch him, there’s no one that can, so I have to keep watching him until he’s home. I’ll rest when he’s home.”

“Riley.” It’s the third time Jack has said her name in the last couple of minutes and this time his voice has gone soft and fond and maybe a little sad.

“I have to take care of him because the only way we can is through here,” Riley waves a hand at her computer, “and I’m the only one who’s got the know-how to do it.” She’s a little proud of how steady she sounds, how she’s meeting Jack’s eyes without hesitation or waver. “It’s my turn to be his big sister. I have to protect him. Right now, nobody else can.”

Jack nods. He looks for a second like he might do something terrible and heartfelt and parental and completely Jack, like tell her he’s proud of her or kiss her on the forehead, but Riley looks sharply away before he can do either, or anything else.

“Don’t,” she mutters. “Don’t be nice to me right now, because if you do, I’ll cry, and I can’t cry, because then I’ll get a headache, and I need to focus.”

With a quiet snort, Jack nods. “Okay,” he says. “I’m gonna go speak with Patti for a minute. Keep an eye on our boy, big sister.”

When he’s left, Riley turns back to her computer. Before she can return to the task at hand, though, she catches sight of Bozer in the periphery of her vision and looks up.

“What?” she asks.

“Inside joke?” he comes back with, tone as bemused as the raised-eyebrow look on his face.

It makes Riley laugh, a huff of air that only sounds a little damp. “Yeah,” she says. “Kind of a long story.”

“Cliff’s notes version?” Bozer is smiling too, now, smaller than his usual grin, but it’s a smile.

Maybe it’s the question, or the smile, or the combination of every intense feeling she’s felt over the past day or so culminating in the knowledge that, though not yet home, Mac is finally away from the Organization, but Riley finds herself shaking her head ruefully and explaining.

“Long story short? We were on a mission. Jack was on the phone with me, didn’t see the mark behind him, turned around, saw the guy, and panicked. He decided to tell me it was time to grab Mac from the drop point by saying we needed to,” Riley lifts up both her hands so she can form air quotes around the next bit, “‘pick up my brother from robotics club’. Of course there was no way we were gonna let him live _that_ down, so we spent the plane ride home cracking jokes about it, which turned into bickering about if he was the big brother or I was the big sister. He said it was obviously him, cause he’s older, which, _barely_ , and that just wasn’t fair, so we agreed to take turns.”

“Take turns?” Bozer repeats in an amused tone, obviously entertained by the anecdote.

“Yeah.” She shakes her head. “It was a joke, but it didn’t feel like it after a while. We decided that whoever needed an older sibling, the other one would be it then, and we’d trade.” Riley looks up again and winces. “Is that stupid? It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”

“Nah,” he dismisses easily, shrugging. “I think it’s sweet.”

“Yeah?”

Before they can talk any further, there’s a ping from Riley’s computer, and her focus snaps immediately to the screen.

“What is it? What’d you get? Is it Mac?” The questions get closer as Bozer gets up and walks around the island, leaning over her shoulder to peer at the screen.

“An alias he’s used undercover just bought a bus ticket,” she confirms. “Heading back New Mexico towards Arizona. Up a bit, so it’s not direct, but it’s something.” Riley’s fingers start flying over the keyboard, eliminating the routes further to the South and narrowing the focus of the surveillance she’s keeping over transportation hubs.

It’s a burst of optimism that doesn’t last long. The bubble of light-heartedness brought on by the story, by the discovery of the bus ticket, withers and dies as minutes drag on into hours and Riley feels more worn down than she can ever remember feeling. Bozer gets up at some point, stepping out of the room to make a phone call or something, he doesn’t say, and Riley is left alone with her computer and Mac. Mac, who is out there in the desert, likely not even aware someone is watching over him. It’s a lonely, heavy sensation, resettling over her like it had before when she’d explained to Jack that she couldn’t rest, not yet.

When Sam and Callen arrive hours later, Riley is still there, tracking any hint of Mac’s progress from his kitchen. She ignores the conversation they have over her head, talking to Jack and Patti, both pairs bringing each other up to speed. Not that there’s much to say - there hasn’t been much progress since the NCIS agents officially abandoned their part of the search for Mac. Could it be called abandoning it if they had, technically, succeeded? Riley didn’t really care. She had her own search to worry about, one that wasn’t progressing very well. Something about the timeline feels off, but she can’t put her finger on it, and besides, Mac was tortured and concussed, it makes sense that he isn’t taking the most logical, direct path.

“So you’re just going to monitor him from here?” Callen is asking.

“We’re watching him, as much as we can, and waiting for him to reach California,” Patti confirms. “We can’t help him if we take off from here.

“He knows his way home,” puts in Jack. “If I thought he’d stop somewhere, I’d go pick him up, but I know Mac, and he’s not gonna stop until he’s back.”

Riley tunes out whatever it is they say next, because it’s becoming increasingly obvious that there really is something wrong with the path she’s tracking. The thing that’s been bothering her the most is that, of the clues she’s found, the evidence of Mac’s trail, none of it has been conclusively linked to Mac. She’s only got her best guess that the familiar alias that bought that bus ticket actually belongs to him, that the brief, aborted call to Phoenix HQ that hadn’t even rung through was actually Mac on a payphone. It has to be him, it’s the only thing that makes sense, but still. Something doesn’t feel right.

She squints at the screen, blinks hard to try and focus her exhausted eyes, and tries to find what she’s missing. The talking isn’t helping, a buzz of distracting sound yet another thing preventing her from finding the concentration she needs to put the pieces together. Just as she’s about to get up and go outside, sit somewhere else where it’s quieter, less crowded, another noise joins the miasma of diverting input. Riley looks up, irritated, about to tell whoever it was to shut their phone’s ringer off already, when she sees who it was.

Bozer is walking swiftly out of the room, phone held up to his ear. His sudden departure is enough to silence Jack, Patti, Sam, and Callen. They appear to be just as confused as Riley is, and no amount of exchanged glances, shrugs, and microexpressions clears any of it up. Luckily for Riley’s existingly sky-high blood pressure, Bozer comes back quickly, phone held between his hands, fingers fiddling over the buttons on the side. He’s nervous, and it takes a couple of tries for him to explain, words catching in his thought before they’re barely more than a beat of anticipatory air.

“I called the Coltons,” he says in a rush, then cringes, waiting for the negative response he’s obviously expecting.

It doesn’t come, the consensus instead one of confusion. Riley pushes her computer to the side, folding her arms and raising an eyebrow, waiting for the explanation. It’s her Bozer turns to when he gives it, making eye contact with a tiny raise of one shoulder, a helpless half-shrug.

“You were talking to yourself,” he says, sounding embarrassed. “Or your computer, or Mac, or something. About the path he was taking. That it didn’t make sense, that the timeline was off and stuff. And I talked to them a bit earlier, before we knew it was Roswell, and… I don’t know. I had a hunch. They were headed back that way anyway, on their way home from their bounty in Utah, and I asked them to check it out. You were right. There was something wrong with the path. Cause he’s not on it.”

Now Bozer lifts his phone, tapping through a couple things, before handing it to her. Riley looks at the screen and there, in a grainy capture from what feels like the millionth piece of security cam footage she’s seen recently, is Mac.

“It’s from a bus terminal,” Bozer says while Riley passes the phone to Jack, who shows it in turn to Patty, Sam, and Callen. “By now he’s crossed into Texas, they picked up another trace headed towards Odesssa. They’re sure it’s him.”

“Texas?” she repeats incredulously. “Why would he be in _Texas_? That’s the opposite direction from California.”

“I don’t know, but I’ve talked to the Coltons, and they’ve agreed to help us like they said they would before. Mama Colton said they’d try and collision course their paths. Mac knows them. If they can catch up to him, he’ll stay, at which point they’ll call us, and we can go get him. We’ll keep an eye from here and you can keep doing your thing, help them with their trajectory.”

It’s a smart plan, Riley has to admit, and despite the disorienting nature of this latest piece of information, she feels a little better knowing that at least they _have_ a plan. Jack says as much, clapping a hand on Bozer’s shoulder and giving him a little shake, before exchanging a look with Patti that it’s beyond Riley’s scope of understanding to suss out the nature of. Besides, she’s got better things to do right now.

Getting out of her seat, she unrolls the map, the same one they’d been using before when trying to figure out if the Organization was taking Mac to Vernon or Roswell. The old marks are still there, and it sends a wave of tiredness over her just to look at them, at all the progress they’d made tracking him only for it to amount to nothing when he up and disappeared, _again_.

Shaking off the frustration, the fatigue, Riley begins clearing the markers they’d used to build a visual representation of their findings, preparing to do the same thing all over again. She’s a technological person at heart, a child of the digital age, but there’s something helpful about having it there physically in front of you, of being able to see the big picture and rearrange parts when you need to. She circles Odessa, then places markers along the path towards California, the one she’d thought he was following. It doesn’t make sense.

“He was spoofing his own path,” she mutters, the answer dawning on her as she traces it with her finger. “Mac was making it look like he was coming back here, and instead, he turned the other way and went into Texas. Why the hell would he do that? Where’s he _going_?”

No one is paying much attention to the quiet words, spoken only under her breath, barely loud enough for even herself to hear, and so no one answers. It doesn’t matter, really. The only person who could give a satisfying answer isn’t here.

While she works on this, Riley notes out of the corner of her eye that the NCIS agents, having done all they can do, are getting ready to go. Jack is thanking them for all their help, shaking both men’s hands and promising that he’s never going to forget this.

As they start to leave, though, Riley finds there’s something she needs to get out before they do.

“Thank you,” she says hurriedly, the words coming out in a rush just as they reach the threshold of the hallway. It halts their progress, and Riley wants to say more, wants to find a way to express to these two men, still virtual strangers to her, what it means to her that they’ve done what they have, dropped their lives and taken off across the country in search of someone they had no connection to, who wasn’t their family. Who was _her_ family. They’d done what she couldn’t, and Riley has no idea how to make them understand what she feels like she owes them for that. “For… Everything you did, for- Just. Thank you, _so much_ , thank you.”

Callen dips his chin in acknowledgement of her gratitude, and Sam smiles at her.

“I hope you get him back home soon,” he says, and she tries to smile back with minor success.

“Me too,” she agrees, only a minor tremor in her voice.

Sam stops in the doorway, turning back to look once more into the house, meeting Riley’s eyes for a brief moment before turning to Jack.

“Give us a call when he gets here? Let us know he’s okay?” he asks, and Jack nods.

As he responds, agreeing to give Sam and Callen a call when the whole mess finally got sorted out, Riley looks back down at the laminated surface under her hands. She squints at Odessa, at the moderately sized city she’s never been to, in the opposite direction Mac should’ve been going in. Riley can’t help but feel like she was just here, staring at a map, asking questions of a vanished young man who can’t possibly answer.

“Where are you, Mac?” she mutters, pointlessly, to empty air. “Where are you going?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: description of injuries near the beginning but nothing too graphic.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohhh guys sorry this is late!! i'm getting settled into my new job and everything is evening out for me, so this should be easier for the last handful of chapters. home stretch, hey??
> 
> lemme know what you think, and hit me up on tumblr at altschmerzes if you wanna chat!! especially if you have a prompt for me [wink]

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- The Mountain Goats, "Spent Gladiator 2"_

It would be so easy to fall asleep. The sound of the tracks under the train car Mac is currently crumpled inside of is hypnotic in its rhythm and its consistency. It has been a struggle to stay awake since the initial adrenaline rush of his escape wore off. He’s already succumbed to the nagging pull of unconsciousness twice: once in the luggage compartments of the first bus, and again in the third.

Mac is just glad that whoever those men had been, whatever they’d come to do, the taller one had released him from the cuffs before he made his escape. Even so, pulsing waves of pain radiate from the marks they tore into his wrists, where they lay gingerly over his lap. Every time his half-wrecked body is jostled, renewed pain sparks through every point of damage. It’s enough to freeze the air in his lungs, throat working frantically as he tries to breathe through it. Mac’s shoulders ache, his head pounds, and the injuries decorating his face, hand, and torso seem to be taking turns as to who gets to shout the loudest.

At this precise moment, Mac would be hard pressed to name a single time in his life where he felt this wrung out, this _strained_ to the very end of his ability to keep going, this ready to curl up and surrender--lose his grasp on awareness and sink into rest. But he can’t sleep. He still can’t sleep, not yet.

He’s not safe yet.

 _They’re_ not safe yet.

It’s this thought that gives Mac the strength to keep going, to put one foot in front of the other, to keep his eyes open and his mind processing information. The possibility that they’re in trouble, that his team hasn’t come for him because they _can’t_ , because something awful is stopping them, is just too strong to discount and too dangerous to ignore. Of course, there are other possibilities -- that the reason he hadn’t looked up and seen Jack’s smiling face in the doorway with a full tac team behind him is merely that the investigation into his disappearance hasn’t yet yielded fruit. It is, however, merely that, a possibility, and not one Mac believes in with enough confidence to count on.

Mac has to stay alive. He has to stay awake. He’s the only one who can help them now. His team needs him - his _family_ needs him. There’s no other choice. He has to be strong now.

The bus had been the first step, just enough to get him away from the compound, away from the fists, the air horn, the gun, the-

A deep breath sucked in too quickly makes Mac cough. He doubles over on himself, fisted hands pressed to his forehead in an attempt to beat back the thundering headache.

It would be so _easy_ to fall asleep.

Focus. _Focus_. How did he get here.

The first bus had stopped for gas in one of the small unincorporated towns scattered around Roswell. It had been relatively easy to hide himself amongst duffle bags just before it pulled away back onto the highway. Mac hadn’t known at the time where the bus was going, just that he needed to get away as fast as possible, and if he tried to run any farther on foot he would probably collapse from a combination of exhaustion and pain right there on the side of the road.

The bus was the first step but far from the last. When Mac had exited the luggage compartment, mere moments before the bus pulled away, it had been without the faintest idea where he was. Much like that first gas station had oriented him, so did this one, when a scan of his surroundings showed him one very stark difference between where he’d been when he’d gotten on the bus and where he is now that he’s left it.

When he’d gotten to the bus, the license plates surrounding him, few though they’d been, all held one similarity. New Mexico. They’d all been from New Mexico. Now, here, the identifying plaques at the back of the handful of vehicles sharing that dusty parking lot with him share a similar feature. He’s not in New Mexico anymore, the glaring, impossible-to-miss yellow and teal replaced by nondescript black and white. At some point, the bus had crossed a border, and Mac found himself in Texas.

It’s a second bus that carries him away, one bound for Odessa. He lays in another luggage compartment, a suitcase jamming into his spine and his less injured arm curled up in an attempt to protect his head, and begins to make a plan. He’s got a wallet stolen from an unconscious Organization operative, a phone obtained at the same place that’ll bring whoever’s after his team down on his head the moment he uses it, and determination enough to move a mountain if that’s what he needs to do. That’s enough. That’s going to have to be enough.

It _isn’t_ enough.

Oh, sure, it started well, with the phone sent on an Amtrak line bound for California the tracking signal loud and clear, a ticket bought with the money from the stolen wallet and an alias he knew would throw up flags. But on the third bus, Mac falls asleep again. His head nods down, chin dipping towards his chest, until the blare of a siren outside startles him awake and suddenly he doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know the difference between that sound and an airhorn. He bolts up, only to knock himself back down again when the confines of his surroundings prove smaller than he’d anticipated.

It’s then he knows he’ll never make it. Not like this. He needs to find somewhere safe, a place he’ll be _safe_ while he rests, comes up with a plan, figures out how to contact the Phoenix and tell Matty what’s going on. She’ll be able to help him. Whatever happened to Jack and Riley and Bozer on their way to get him, whatever has befallen his team, Matty can help. Mac just has to get to- to get to-

Where is he?

Texas. There’s something important about Texas, something he’s supposed to remember, something- Oh. _Oh_.

Somewhere safe. He has to get somewhere safe.

So now, the train. The train taking him on the right path, towards a town Mac can’t call forward the name of but knows how to get to, how to follow winding roads and end this free fall with a soft landing. He’ll be able to rest there. Mac waits for the coughing to die down and eases himself back, leaning once more against the side of the car. He watches out the open side of the door and tries to keep his breathing even. Soon. He’ll be somewhere safe _soon_.

* * *

Something about this doesn’t feel right. Jack stands by the map, studying Riley’s labels, and tries to divine from the tracking marks what he’s missing, whatever piece of this puzzle lies just outside his grasp and will complete the picture once he manages to catch it. Thus far catching it has eluded him, though. So he squints at the map and wonders what the hell his boy is doing out there, where he could possibly going.

Beside the map which held so much of their focus in the past two days sits Jack’s phone, which is currently yielding exactly as many answers as the map is. The last time he’d picked it up, called Mama Colton and asked about their progress, he hadn’t gotten what he’d describe as a friendly reception. He’d been informed that _they_ would call _him_ and not the other way around, the moment they had news. It made sense, of course, it could only benefit Mac to have them as focused and undistracted as possible, but too much longer being told to sit and wait for news and Jack’s head was literally going to explode.

The plan as it currently stands at least ends with some kind of action. As soon as the Coltons are able to catch up with Mac, they’ll somehow keep him in place long enough for Jack, Riley, and Bozer to get on a plane and get to where he is. How, exactly, the Coltons plan on keeping Mac in some yet to be determined corner of Texas until backup gets there has not been made clear to Jack, but if anybody can, he’d put his money on them. Besides, right now, he has his own part of the plan to worry about. It’s his job to get the plane together, to call Matty and get her to agree to send them on the jet to collect Mac. A regular passenger plane would take too long. They need to be able to get up and go as soon as the Coltons give the call. Which is all well and good, except it’s Jack’s responsibility to convince Matty of this, and after their last conversation, he’s not sure how well that’s going to go over.

Before he has the opportunity to mentally rehearse his upcoming hopefully-not-a-fight with Matty, however, Jack’s phone goes off. He snatches it up immediately, answering before it can complete even the first ring.

“Hello?”

It’s Jesse Colton’s voice that answers. “Mama’s driving, said to tell you he’s diverted West, towards El Paso. Frank and Billy are coming ‘round the other direction, and there are no other major highways out of here. We’ve got him. He can keep running, but he’s gonna run into one of us if he does. We can get you the details when you get here, but it’s time to get on a plane.”

Jack hangs up before Jesse says anything else, and he figures she’ll forgive him for that one. He calls to the others, milling about focused on their own tasks but within earshot, “They’ve got him!”

“Where is he?” Riley asks, at the same time that Bozer demands, “Is he okay?”

“I don’t know and I don’t know,” Jack answers. The edge of his thumbnail catches on the button that silences the ringer of his phone and he keeps picking at it, a focus for all the nervous energy buzzing through his body right now. Apparently, he should’ve been clearer. “They have the area,” he explains, gesturing at the map, specifically at the furthermost West corner of Texas, where Mama Colton and her family have Mac almost cornered. “It’s close enough that we should be ready to go as soon as the plane is ready.”

There’s something scathing in the look Riley shoots him at the mention of the plane. “And how’s _that_ going?” The question is blunt and to the point, none of the dressed up teasing it would usually take the form of. As the hours have gotten longer and her caffeine intake has escalated, her patience has grown shorter and her voice harsher. Jack isn’t taking it personally, he knows that he himself couldn’t be described as pleasant to be around right now. It worries him, though, yet another indicator that she isn’t taking this well at all. It’s weighing on her, the circumstances themselves and then the immense burden of responsibility she’s shouldered.

The fact of the matter is, though, he’s going to have to shelve that worry for later. There’s a more immediate crisis to manage and besides, Riley herself has demonstrated that any attempt to take care of her until Mac is safely home is going to be shut down immediately. So in lieu of starting another argument by asking if she’s okay, Jack focuses on the other argument, the one he can’t avoid.

“I’m working on it,” he tells her, shaking the phone held between his fingers. “I’ve gotta call Matty, you just keep doing your thing, get us as close an airport as possible.”

Riley nods sharply, turning back to her computer and hitting a few keys. Bozer turns with her, watching her screen with his arms folded tightly and an uncharacteristic frown worn deep into his forehead. It looks odd on his face, as if his features weren’t designed with that kind of worry, that kind of fear in mind.

As the phone rings and Jack waits for Matty to answer he rehearses what he’s going to say. He listens to the tone which is swiftly becoming the single most obnoxious noise he’s ever heard in his life, and tries to figure out how to convince the most strong willed person he’s ever known to change her mind. It’s going to be impossible. But failure is not an option, so there’s no choice but to figure it out somehow.

Jack will have to convince her that they’re owed this. He’ll have to remind her what _she_ owes _him_ , old deeds he’d done that he’d never once considered calling in favors for, not until now. He’ll have to remind her what she owes Mac, what the Phoenix Foundation owes Mac, what the whole damn _world_ owes Mac. Mac, who’s saved her, saved Jack, saved them all more times than they can count or surely even know about, all while his own life never even _approached_ consideration. Mac deserves more than this, he’ll remind Matty, more than being left alone (over and over again) and now that he’s out of the Organization’s grasp, the operation can’t possibly be jeopardized by bringing him home, and-

“Dalton?”

Jack hadn’t realized the ringing had stopped until Matty’s voice, sounding as strained and stressed as he’s ever heard her, cuts right into his increasingly heated internal monologue.

“Matty!” he exclaims, then cringes, as it sort of made him sound like he’d been surprised it was her that answered. “Matty,” he corrects, having cleared his throat and lowered his voice.

“What do you _want_?” The tone indicates that, even more than usual, Matty is not in the mood to mess around.

“I want a plane.” Jack tries to say it with as much assertiveness as he can manage, and it’s a pretty impressive product, if he does say so himself. If he had only that voice to go off of, he’d never guess that right now he’s about as close to a nervous breakdown as he can remember being.

“You’re gonna have to give me more to go on than that, Jack, I am _not_ in the mood. I’ve had people sent by Oversight here since _six in the morning_ and I haven’t slept. Get on with it.”

“Mac has-” Been found in the process of an investigation it would get us all drawn and quartered if the people standing near you heard me say we’d been conducting it. “Mac has made contact. We know where he is. He’s gotten away from the Organization, we can go get him now without risking the investigation, Matty, you have to let us-”

“Twenty minutes.”

“He’s done _so much_ , he deserves- Wait,” Jack interrupts himself as what Matty actually said catches up to his brain. “What?”

“You get me a landing point, and I’ll get you a plane,” she tells him, and her voice is reinforced steel. Her voice is a promise, and Jack feels his knees go suddenly weak under himself. He throws out a hand suddenly, bracing it against the wall. This was not what he had been expecting.

Of course, he’d been hoping to avoid a fight, a drawn out battle of what is owed to who and what should be done about it. That is not the conversation Jack wanted to have with Matty, but it was the one he was prepared for, the one he’d been rehearsing his lines for the debut of since the notion of having to make this call entered his mind. He hadn’t been prepared for her to say this, to agree immediately and without a word of caution as to the higher ups and their mission.

“ _Finally_.” The word is hissed, barely audible, from Matty’s end of the line, and Jack almost laughs, because he should’ve been.

This is exactly what he should’ve expected. He knows her, knows her _well_ , and this is exactly the response he should’ve prepared for. It was easy to forget, under the ceaseless, crushing sense of trying fruitlessly to watch out for Mac alone, far away, and helpless, what kind of a person they had waiting for the moment she had any possible way to help.

“Finally,” Jack agrees, his voice gone from the strong insistence it had been before, into a watery breath of relief. “Finally.”

* * *

As she hangs up the phone, Matty looks across the room at the small collection of suit-clad and tries hard not to hate them. These are the people she has to work with, she reminds herself. These people are here for a reason. It’s not a reason she agrees with, it’s not a reason she feels as if she can _live_ with having been a tool of, but it’s a reason.

They’ve been here all day, strategizing and planning, but Matty would be hard-pressed to recall much of what had been discussed. Her opinion hadn’t been needed for most of it, and besides, she had other priorities just then, other things occupying her mind somewhere uncertain and unsafe. For most of the time since their arrival, their voices were static background noise as Matty very deliberately did not pray or hope or anything else that would even vaguely suggest Mac _not_ coming home was any kind of possibility. Prayer and hope imply question and Matty Webber does not deal in question. She deals in certainty.

Jack _would_ figure this out.

Mac _would_ come home.

This _would_ be over, and _no one_ would die.

Not on her watch.

“Angus MacGyver,” she says, loudly and clearly, cutting through the background noise of the room, “is ready for a pickup.” Before the silence breaks into protest, into reminders about the mission, into threats if she or they have violated the rules about how this was going to go, Matty continues. “He did what you wanted from him,” she says, and tries to keep her voice from edging into reproach, to betray exactly how she felt about what they’d asked of one reckless kid whose lack of regard for his own life Matty was already deeply concerned by. “MacGyver got himself out and now he’s made contact, ready for pickup. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go arrange for his team’s transport to his location.”

It isn’t one of those times where ‘if you’ll excuse me’ is a rhetorical request, a passive aggressive snub to a person whose permission you don’t at all need. This is rather a time where ‘if you’ll excuse me’ is a an actual question, one Matty needs to ask to maintain her visage of agreeableness, to forestall any potential doubt as to whether she’d been as cooperative as she’d appeared. Waiting for their answer is an agonizing stretch of still air, until there’s a set of smug smiles, a curt nod.

When she hears as she turns away one of those previously static voices say, “See? We told you, didn’t we?”, it’s viciously hard for Matty to refrain from throwing something. Instead she tightens her grip on her phone and grits her teeth. She has other priorities now.

* * *

“Are you sure you can’t come with us?” Riley is in the middle of asking when Jack’s second phone call with Matty is over. Patti shakes her head.

“It’s too risky,” she replies. “I’ll wait here, and I’ll see you when you get back.”

It’s a promise Jack doesn’t know how she’ll be able to keep. So much about Patti’s future in particular is uncertain, so much left to chance and the whims of the powers to whose attention her innocence will have to be brought. Her fate, however, is on a more delayed clock than Mac’s, and so Jack has to prioritize. One crisis at a time. One life hanging in the balance at a time.

“Come on guys,” he calls to Riley and Bozer. “We’ve gotta get going.”

While he waits for them to join him so they can get on the plane currently fueled and ready, Jack’s eyes drift again over that _frustrating_ map. The paper in his hand with the address of the regional airstrip they’re headed to jabs into Jack’s palm, and he shifts it, laying the partially crumpled strip down and frowning at it. The sense he’d had earlier, the feeling that something about this isn’t right beyond the cloying, suffocating not-rightness of all of it, is back with a vengeance. It feels like sandpaper against Jack’s instincts, harsh and persistent. Something isn’t right. Something…

Wait.

Someone tries to say something and Jack holds up a hand, hushing them.

“Hang on. Hang on, wait, I’m thinking.”

The airstrip address. West Texas. The markers tracking Mac’s seemingly random progress to an area where there’s nothing for him, no-

“Oh, damn. _Damn_.” The words are almost involuntary, yanked out of him by the realization that’s dawned over Jack’s shoulders, throwing everything into abrupt clarity. “I know where he’s going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: major character injury in the first segment


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok first things first i have to call myself out: the original outline of this fic was ten chapters and the coltons didn't show up at all. the reason it got drug out? i had no idea where texas was. i had to be told by a friend that texas and california do not in fact share a border. i'm just glad this got sorted out before i started actually writing. anyway, now that you all know that i don't have the faintest grasp of american geography after living here my whole life, let's on with it!!
> 
> excited for the reunion chapter??? it's coming up next, we finally get mac back! for the moment, enjoy chapter thirteen, and please take a moment to drop me a line, tell me how you're liking it! i appreciate you all so much, and i hope you enjoy!

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- The Mountain Goats, "Spent Gladiator 2"_

Walking alone along a deserted road in the middle of the night is probably not the safest activity Mac has ever participated in. Nor, however, is it the most dangerous - not even nearing the top ten of just this month - and he doesn’t have a wealth of options. The nearest major highway is long behind him, and there’s nowhere near enough along this road for busses of any kind to turn down it. Several times now Mac’s vision has gone fuzzy and spotted with black, pits of dark nothingness appearing against a backdrop of already dark, blurry-featured landscape.

Mac shivers, the chill of the night biting into his arms. Wearing only a t-shirt and jeans, he’s left exposed to the cool air, the effects of which are exacerbated by his shocky system. He looks around, tries to find anything familiar, a landmark by which to orient himself. This is not his first time down this road. The last time, it had been a lot warmer. It had been daylight.

_The sun was bright and demanded attention from the sky, setting the countryside aglow. Jack was behind the wheel of the rental car, already laughing by the time Mac got halfway through complaining about the drive._

_“I’m just saying, we’ve been driving forever, we could’ve set down at that regional airport, but no, we had to fly in through El Paso.”_

_“The drive is half the fun!” Mac must not have looked convinced, because Jack had continued, shaking his head and informing him with a voice of authority, “C’mon, Mac, the anticipation! When we were kids that was the best part. Knowing we were gonna have a great time, practically bouncin’ out of our seats… You’ve gotta have the drive. It’s not a proper trip without it.”_

The memory of the conversation, a bright recollection of a bright afternoon, is one that usually leaves Mac with a warmth in his chest. This time though he is left feeling bereft and off kilter. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation, maybe it’s the combination of physical pain and the emotional strain he’s been under, but Mac finds his eyes burning, a hitch in his already uneven breath. He blinks hard and coughs, trying to fight back the lump in his throat. Just a little farther. Just a little farther, and he’ll be there. He’ll be safe.

When Mac crests the last small incline and looks down upon the Dalton family cabin, the wave of relief that crashes over him is nearly powerful enough to send him to his knees. He claps a hand over his mouth, an embarrassing whine escaping him when he jars the injuries to his wrist and cheek. He’s finally here. His journey down the slope to the front porch of the cabin is disorganized and unbalanced, several times slipping and nearly going headfirst into the dust and brush. Even in the low light of the distant moon, in a part of West Texas too far out for street lamps, Mac knows exactly where to go.

He stumbles over to the lean-to just to the left of the cabin, the one containing a miscellaneous assortment of tools and a pile of firewood. It takes a couple of tries to retrieve the key, set into a worn groove up on top of the doorframe. Mac figures he’s got a couple of ribs that are deeply bruised but not broken, given reaching up for the key is a monumental struggle but not an impossible feat. The door of the cabin sticks a little, just like it had the first day Jack brought him here, and it takes shoving at the wood paneling with one sore, strained shoulder to send it open wide and Mac tumbling in.

On the ground, palms stinging and knees aching against the floor just inside the cabin, Mac breathes heavily in the still, undisturbed air. It’s clear that none of Jack’s relatives are currently using the cabin, given the lack of cars outside and the distinct feeling inside that a building has when it’s completely empty. Mac can hear his own breathing, harsh in his ears, loud like he hadn’t imagined breathing could be. The idea of pushing himself up off the floor and standing, walking across the room, is so overwhelming he almost gives up then and there, collapses onto the time-worn entryway with the door still hanging open behind him. It would be so easy.

Easy was never the word to be used to describe Mac’s life, though, and he knows it still can’t be. Not if he’s going to get it together, not if he’s going to help his team. So he grits his teeth, ignores every protest his body makes to the movement, and shoves himself upright. Every motion is dogged by the urge to give up and sleep, to crawl into one of the beds in one of the rooms and lapse into unconsciousness, but he knows he can’t do that yet. He has to stay awake, at least long enough to set traps, just in case the people who took him manage to track him here. In case the men from the warehouse, the ones who’d let him out of the cuffs, somehow reappear.

Walking slowly through the cabin, leaning on walls for support, Mac bypasses the kitchen and heads to the bathroom, a plan forming by the sight of the faucet in the kitchen sink. For lack of an air horn to blow at himself, cold water would likely serve as just as effective a stimulus, one that would hopefully shock him awake long enough to lay some kind of alerts around the perimeter. He turns the shower on and sticks his head under it, unable to suppress a sharp gasp at the sudden pour of what feels like ice over his head.

Maybe because of the rush he was in, maybe because of the concussion, but there were several things about this plan Mac failed to consider before implementing it. The first being the wounds to his head, the one behind his ear that had knocked him out back on the back porch of his house, and the one on his cheek, torn carelessly into his skin as collateral of the blow that broke his phone. When the water impacted his head, it also hit the injuries he’d sustained, and the resulting rush of pain is enough to leave him dazed. This combines with the second unplanned factor, that being the awkward angle at which he is attempting to stay outside the shower while sticking his head under the spray, and results in the moment Mac slips and falls forward.

Laying there on the ground, freezing cold spray pelting his body, Mac blinks through the water and up at the muted teal tiles above him. It’s enough to feel like a sign, like the universe is telling him it’s time to give up the ghost and accept whatever comes, pass out collapsed on the bathroom floor and wait for fate or luck to catch up to him. Mac lays there, shivering and breathing in shallow pants. Getting up feels more impossible every time he falls. Even the effort involved in stretching up one arm to shut off the faucet is enough to leave him spent and exhausted.

_“Get up.”_

The words come through a haze of an aching, battered body and a fuzzy, disoriented brain, clear and sharp. An order. A voice Mac knows, though the person it belongs to isn’t here.

_“Come on now, kid, it’s time to get up.”_

“Jack?” Mac mutters, blinking away water and peering around at the small room. He hadn’t turned any lights on, wanting to avoid being noticed if anyone was watching the cabin, and though it’s dim, he can tell there’s no one else there. That voice, Jack’s voice, had to have come from his own memory, a conjured support from a mind that clearly knew he wasn’t going to be able to make it on his own.

_“You’re not finished yet. Get up. We need you, Mac, it’s time to get up.”_

Inch by inch, moment by moment, Mac drags himself to his feet, bracing against the sink and staring into his own barely distinguishable features in the mirror. He doesn’t look good. There are dark circles under his eyes, exacerbated by a heavy bruise shadowing from his temple down over his cheekbone on the left side of his face. The right side is similarly marked, the bruise and cut from that initial blow having had time to darken and bloom purple. A glance down shows Mac his damaged wrists, the alarming discoloration striped across the back of one hand. Not even counting the contusions hidden beneath his clothing, it’s bad.

Speaking of clothing, Mac pulls at his shirt, the sopping wet fabric clinging to his skin and dripping water onto the bathroom floor. He makes a face and decides that, before he does anything else, a change of clothes is going to be necessary. Luckily, the last time he’d been here, he’d been shown where the clothing various Daltons and company had left there over the years was stored. Once he’s changed into dry clothes, Mac sets about stringing signaling devices around the outside of the cabin, largely relying on good old fashioned metal hung from string that was sure to produce a series of loud sounds if disturbed.

No one was going to get in this house without him being able to hear it. He’s safe enough now to regroup. Finally, _finally_ , Mac can allow himself a moment to rest.

* * *

When Jesse Colton pulls the car off the road and onto a dusty, unpaved shoulder, the headlights cut a path through the velvet dark of the night, illuminating the figures of both of her brothers, leaning against the hood of their own vehicle. All day, their paths have cut swaths across Texas, a roaming trajectory that has confused and frustrated her from the moment it began. Now it seems like the journey has finally come to its conclusion, at an address Jack Dalton called and gave them shortly after they’d told him they’d narrowed the location down enough to arrange air transport.

Jesse waits for her mother’s nod, and opens the door, stepping out into the cold night and pulling her light jacket tighter around her body. Frank and Billy both push off the hood of the truck and walk to meet them, all four Coltons standing in a pool of light, just behind the ridge separating them from the Dalton family cabin.

“You’re sure he’s here?” Jesse asks, folding her arms and looking from one of her brothers to the other. Frank nods.

“We saw movement earlier, it’s gotta be him. We called Dalton as soon as we were sure,” he adds.

Jesse looks beside her, where Mama stands silhouetted by the headlights. It’s her instructions Jesse is waiting for, her direction. She doesn’t have to wait long. After a few moments of scanning the countryside, Mama looks to Jesse, across to Frank and Billy, and then out into the gloom where the cabin sits.

“We’ll make a perimeter,” she says. “Keep an eye on the house until MacGyver’s team comes for him.”

“And why don’t we just march down there and let him know what’s going on?” Billy asks, sounding like he thinks this is a big waste of time. Jesse is inclined to agree. They’ve already gone far out of their way for this guy, why stretch it out further into some kind of tense waiting game? Sure enough, Mama has an answer, which she delivers, cool and even.

“Because right now that boy has a head injury and has just ran across two states after facing Lord knows what kind of cruelty. He’s been terrorized, and if the first face he sees is not one he knows well, there’s no telling what he might do.” The logic holds sound, as Mama’s logic always does, and Jesse sees the acceptance on Billy’s face.

“What if he tries to take off before they get here?” This time the question comes from Frank, whose voice and face are dubious, apprehensive, his hesitation taking over from his brother’s. Jesse wants to know the answer to that one too, and turns to face Mama, whose expression doesn’t change at all, maintaining that surety and calm despite the uncomfortable question.

“Well, we’ll just deal with that if and when we have to. Understand?” Mama waits until she gets two nods from the boys and a ‘yes’ from Jesse, then gets back in the car, turning the engine over and sitting there, waiting for her daughter.

Before she heads back to ride with her mother around the dirt road behind the cabin, stake out their respective corners of the building’s perimeter, Jesse exchanges a look with her brothers.

“You heard her,” she says, shaking her head. “We’re babysitting.” Billy snorts. Frank rolls his eyes, scuffing his knuckles over his sister’s shoulder in an affectionate approximation of a punch.

“Better get in the car before Mama has to tell you twice, little sister,” he says. She pulls a face at him before following his advice, climbing into the car and watching out the window as they drive away, leaving Frank and Billy’s forms lit up red by their retreating tail lights.

It only takes a few moments alone before Jesse speaks up, saying what’s been bothering her since the gas station in Nevada, when they’d first learned about MacGyver’s disappearance.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she says, eyes instinctively scanning their dim surroundings. “I get that it’s the right thing to do, the honorable thing to do, but ‘out of the goodness of your heart’ is a pretty flimsy reason to drive two states looking for this kid. You always think ten steps ahead, I’m just askin’ what the steps are.”

Risking a glance, Jesse looks over at precisely the moment Mama takes her eyes off the road for a split second and they regard each other for that moment, until the Colton matriarch turns her focus back to driving. It takes her a moment to speak, like it always does when she’s giving consideration to what she’s going to say. Mama is not a woman who speaks on a whim. Like Jesse said - ten steps ahead.

“If it were one of you, out there on your own,” Mama says slowly, with a fierce look on her face, a promise without need that such a thing would see her tear the country apart with her bare hands, “I’d want to be sure I could call Jack Dalton and know he would be there to help. Now, I believe he would, but it would certainly help to be able to remind him that when it was him, when it was his boy out there alone, we were there to help. A favor is a powerful thing, Jesse. There are a lot worse people you could have owe you one.”

It’s fair advice, and Jesse acknowledges so with a tip of her head. Of course, she wouldn’t have advocated for just leaving, for taking off and wishing MacGyver and his team the best, but it certainly helps to understand why they’re here, why Mama was so ready to agree to do this.

“Besides,” Mama continues after a pause, “Angus MacGyver is a good boy with a good head on his shoulders. We need more like him, and it’d be a real shame for the world to lose this one. I do not want to get an invitation to his funeral.”

Jesse nods in agreement, looking down at her hands. Neither does she.

* * *

Bozer and Riley have both been fidgeting since the plane took off. Jack has been watching them the entire time, cataloguing every tiny movement, every involuntary twitch. Bozer seems to be moving out of nervousness, anxiety bubbling up and over until it makes itself seen in his hands, twisting over and over each other. There’s a lot to be compared between Bozer and Mac, really, when it comes to stillness - that is to say, neither of them have ever quite got the hang of it. Looking to Riley, Jack doesn’t think her restlessness is coming from the same place. Her leg is jittering up and down, shaking her arm where it’s braced against her thigh, and the distant look on her face reminds Jack once again just how little rest she’s gotten since this all began.

Before he has the opportunity to risk bringing it up again, Riley is talking.

“So he’s at your family’s cabin?” she asks, as if they haven’t already had this conversation a couple of times.

“Yeah,” Jack confirms, deciding this is one of those moments where picking his battles was going to have to be advice he took. “He’s been before, he knows where it is. He told me once it felt like somewhere that wasn’t connected to the rest of the world, if… If he was scared and hurt, he knows to go somewhere safe. I believe he’d go there, it’s the right place, it’s in that area. Nothing else makes sense.”

Jack spends the rest of the plane ride thinking about that trip. It had been a good trip. They had both needed it a lot, he and Mac, stillness and peace after months of anything but. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard the kid laugh like that. It settles something uneasy in his gut to think that right now he can’t remember either, can’t call to mind the last time he’d caught Mac in a moment of unrestrained youthful joy. Has it really been that long?

With the memory of the trip to the family cabin clinging to his mind like a sepia-toned polaroid, hanging over his shoulders in a heavy shawl, Jack tries to choke down the acute sense of failure that’s been threatening to shred his heart in his chest since those first moments of Riley’s phone call. He should’ve… God, he doesn’t know, but he should’ve done _something_. Taking care of Mac is his job, professionally and personally speaking, a job he takes excruciatingly seriously.

Shaking his head, he roughly scrapes a hand over his face. His breath comes out unsteady and Jack does his best to quell every unhelpful feeling crowding him, all the guilt and fear and an awful ache he’s been trying hard not to name as grief. All he wants right now is to have his boy back with him, back where he can be seen and heard and touched. It’s a cruel twist of the universe, he thinks, and maybe a sign of him overstepping into a role Mac never asked him to fill, the way he never feels more like a parent than he does when it feels like he’s failed as one.

* * *

The Coltons are waiting when they get to the cabin. They seem to appear one by one out of the countryside, first Frank joining Billy, melting out of what had previously been empty air and startling Bozer. The oldest of the Colton siblings offers a hand, which Bozer takes and gives what he hopes is a firm shake. By the time he’s had the opportunity to wonder where their sister and mother are, a second car pulls around and from it step Jesse and Mama Colton.

With the Coltons in an approximate semi-circle at the side of the road, Jack, Riley, and Bozer face them. They stand closer together than they would normally, giving the appearance of people preparing for an attack, defensive. Bozer shifts uncomfortably as no one says a word, pulling at one sleeve of his cardigan.

“Thanks for picking up when I called you,” he says when the weight of the quiet becomes too much, the first one to break the uneasy silence. Mama regards him for a moment before nodding, leaving Bozer feeling like he just passed some kind of unexplained test.

“You were right to call,” she says to him, and the tiny nugget of burgeoning maybe-regret that had been building in Bozer since the call dissolves, leaving him with nothing but certainty that she’s correct, that it had been the right choice. Mama then turns away from Bozer and addresses Jack, saying, “He’s in there.”

“You’re sure?” Jack’s voice is clipped and tight and Bozer gives himself a moment to be selfishly glad that Jack still has his shit together, at least to the extent that he’s still taking point on this situation.

“Yes.”

Hearing that makes it real, makes the fact that Mac is right there in that building _real_ , and it’s all Bozer can do to keep himself from running down there right now. What he can’t keep himself from doing is voicing that.

“What are we standing around for?” he asks impulsively, trying valiantly to ignore the way his voice is a tinge hysterical, an octave higher than usual. “Why aren’t we just- What are we still doing _standing here_?”

“Because it’s not safe to just go rushing in.”

Bozer turns to Jack with his eyebrows arched high and disbelieving. “Not _safe_? It’s _Mac_.”

“Yeah, it is,” Jack says, and there’s an edge to his voice indicating he’s losing his patience. “Which is why I have to go down there myself. Alone.”

Before Bozer or Riley can voice any kind of objection, which Bozer was most definitely about to do, Jack raises a hand and cuts them both off.

“Ah, no, just listen to me. Right now he’s likely out of his mind. He’s at the least concussed, and according to Sam and Callen it’s a lot worse than that. He’s hurt and he’s not thinkin’ right, and he didn’t come straight home which means he thinks he’s being hunted. Which means he’s gonna have made it as dangerous as possible to approach that cabin.”

“So we be careful,” Riley protests, and by the time she’s gotten the second word out, Jack is already shaking his head.

“You’ve worked with him, so you know how he is in the field,” he tells her, “but you haven’t known him very long. Boze, you’ve known Mac a real long time, but you’ve not worked with him much. I’ve known him _and_ worked with him for years, I know how he operates. I’ll go in alone, bring him back, and we’ll all go home. Okay?”

It’s made clear by the look on Jack’s face, the way he turns from one of them to the other, that he’s expecting Bozer and Riley to actually answer. Bozer nods, not entirely trusting his voice, and hears Riley mutter an ‘okay’.

As Jack begins to pick his way down to the cabin, every so often taking a sharp step to the side or ducking when there’s no obvious reason to, Bozer stands between Riley and the Coltons and watches him, antsy and nervous. It’s less than five minutes later when Jack disappears into the building, the door closing behind him and cutting off their view of him. Bozer tries to keep calm, hands clenched tightly into fists, waiting for a light to go on, waiting for movement to be seen, waiting for Jack and Mac to come back out, waiting.

It feels like the night air, the countryside, like all of the world is holding its breath. Waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: major character injury in the first segment
> 
> as always, come join me on tumblr, i'm at altschmerzes!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i would apologize for the fact that this chapter is basically start to finish emotion and comfort but like, after all this i feel like we all deserve it. but for real there's basically no plot here oops. 
> 
> i'm as always blown away by your awesome support, and appreciate all of you so much!! i hope you enjoy the reunion chapter, it's been a long time coming.

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- The Mountain Goats, "Spent Gladiator 2"_

From the moment the plane set down in Texas, an uneasy, sick feeling has been growing in Jack, and it grows exponentially stronger as he begins his careful way down the slope towards the cabin. The swooping sensation of falling from a great height grips him when he looks up towards the cabin, which is growing closer by the moment as he carefully puts foot in front of foot. Jack swallows hard against the sensation and concentrates, shining his flashlight sideways through the darkened air to catch glimpses of thin trip wires before he can set them off.

As he shines the light around, it doesn’t for a moment escape Jack’s awareness that from the cabin he would be fully and clearly visible approaching. Anyone who looked out the kitchen window would at that point be able to see him. This means one of two things. Either Mac is coherent enough to look outside and recognize that the man coming towards him is Jack, or he’s lost consciousness completely and is therefore unable to launch any sort of retaliation against an unknown, possible hostile.

Essentially, it’s either better or worse than Jack had anticipated, and isn’t that just a thought that would make him laugh, if he wasn’t here for such a godawful reason. He shakes his head and suppresses a panicked chuckle that has no place on this still, apprehensive slope. Jack focuses on the beam of light and on not tripping an alarm that could end in more pain and guilt than this situation can afford.

What he can’t suppress, though, is what G Callen had told him, the words shot down the line after Jack had demanded they tell him exactly what was going on with Mac. It comes back in fragments, the worst parts stuck like push pins in the forefront of Jack’s consciousness.

_Kid looked like he’d been beat half to death._

_Cut from the handcuffs._

_Blood in his hair._

_Keeping him awake using an air horn._

God, what a mess. There’s no way to know how bad Mac actually is without seeing him, and this uncertainty, this question about what shape he’ll be in when Jack walks into that cabin, weighs on him heavy as anything. It’s hard to keep from imagining the worst case scenario, imagining Mac after all that bled out alone on the floor of the Dalton family cabin, waiting with clouded, sightless eyes and a halo of red a radius behind blood-soaked blond hair, endlessly fidgeting hands terribly, sickeningly still on the time-weary slats of the floor. Jack tries to remind himself of what else Callen had said, that Mac didn’t ‘look shot’, that he got all the way here on his own and that has to count for something, but it’s hard after spending so long conjuring image after image of disaster to convince oneself that things really were going to be okay.

When he reaches the threshold, Jack is almost hesitant to enter. If Mac really has died after all this, if he had just enough left in him to get here before his body just gave out, these will be the last moments Jack has to hold onto his life, to the improbable surety that no matter how it got, Mac always came through in the end. Mac had told him once, about Schrodinger’s cat. As long as he doesn’t open that door, Mac is still alive. But then, as long as he doesn’t open that door, there remains the question, what if he isn’t.

The door opens slowly and near-silently, heavy wood making no sound on old hinges that while having borne the strain of time have also seen the care of capable hands, the attention of years of Daltons keeping the cabin in good condition. The air inside the cabin is eerily still, and if Jack didn’t know better he’d assume there was no one there. It doesn’t feel like an occupied building, but it is. Mac is here, somewhere.

 _You can’t just grab him_ , Jack reminds himself as he eases his way through the door. _He’s gonna be all messed up in a haze of pain and fear and you cannot just grab him._

It’s gonna be a hard instinct to fight, the one that’s going to tell Jack to grab Mac the moment he sees him, get his kid in his arms and hold him tight, feel Mac breathing under his hands. The past couple days have been hell, have been the kind of nightmare Jack had wished over and over he would just wake up from, and all he wants is to be able to hug Mac, solid and alive. But the last thing Mac needs right now is to be startled, caught off guard and manhandled before he’s got any idea what’s going on. So Jack grits his teeth, reminds himself to stay calm, and continues making his careful way through the cabin.

Mac is in the kitchen. He’s in the kitchen, crumpled on the worn wood floor, and the moments it takes Jack to ascertain from the doorway that he’s alive, that his chest is moving with steady albeit shallow breaths, are the longest moments of Jack’s life. One of his hands braces against the doorway, the other comes up over his mouth, pressing hard. Jack’s vision goes blurred and he blinks furiously. He swipes at his face, scrubbing away the sudden dampness, and breathes in slow. Lets it out slower.

Mac is alive. Mac is alive and yes, he looks like hell, he’s bruised and bloodied, but he’s not dead and he’s not dying, and it’s the answer to all of Jack’s prayers. He is also, upon a more focused look, taking in more than the absolute minimum information, not wearing his own clothes.

If it hadn’t been for the circumstances surrounding them, Jack would have taken a picture for posterity because the kid looks truly and utterly ridiculous. The first glow of pre-dawn light, like someone turned the dimmer switch up on the sky, illuminates Mac’s blond hair, showing it to be darker than usual. It’s soaking wet, and the clothes he’s wearing don’t fit him. The shirt is one of Jack’s own, a faded ACDC short-sleeve that’s too broad and too long for him, the sweatpants too short in the leg. Jack shakes his head.

_Looks like you’ve got a hell of a story to tell us when we get home, bud._

Before they can take him home, though, he’s gotta wake up. Jack wants to wake him from there, to avoid startling Mac when he’s surely traumatized by touching him while he’s asleep, but there’s a knife on the ground next to his leg and it’s far too big a gamble. The risk that he could hurt Jack or worse, himself, is far too high to leave to chance. There’s only one option that keeps them both as safe as possible. Jack’s going to have to pin his hands to wake him up.

It’s a thought that makes the sick feeling from earlier come back, the idea of pinning Mac down, restraining him after he’s already spent the last god knows how long being thrown around and beat. But, because he’s spent the last god knows how long being thrown around and beat, because he’s suffered sleep deprivation and head trauma, the sudden appearance of an imposing man he may not immediately recognize is not information he’s going to take well.

The main problem here, aside from the obvious, is Mac’s wrists. Callen was being kind when he’d described the damage done by the handcuffs Mac had reportedly been in when they’d found him. The bruises are ugly and there’s blood too, and it makes Jack so angry it feels like his lungs are turning to ash, burning and acrid in his throat. Someone did this to him. Someone has taken Jack’s- Jack’s _kid_ and they’ve _hurt_ him, and now, because they hurt him so bad he’s not been thinking straight for hours, Jack’s got to risk hurting him too.

Approaching as quietly as he can, Jack kneels down on the floor in front of Mac, reaching out and taking hold of Mac’s forearms just below the wounds from the cuffs. The couple of seconds it takes for the contact to elicit a response is extremely worrying, and then Jack doesn’t have time for worry, because Mac is awake and he’s terrified.

“Mac,” Jack says, trying to catch his attention, get him to focus, to recognize his partner. “Mac, come on, it’s me. It’s Jack, you know me.”

There is absolutely nothing about this that Jack doesn’t hate. He can feel himself getting choked up, a wave of loathing aimed inward gathering in his chest at being the cause of the fear in Mac’s face, the reason however tangentially that Mac is in more pain. The words coming out of the boy’s mouth don’t make sense, broken up and hoarse, and Jack makes a hushing sound. He keeps his grip as loose as he can, catches Mac’s eyes, and speaks softly.

“Mac, buddy, it’s me. It’s Jack, it’s me, I ain’t gonna hurt you. Nobody’s gonna hurt you anymore, you’re safe. It’s me. It’s _me_ , you’re not alone. You know me. You’re safe.”

As suddenly as it had started, the movement stops, and Mac is still.

“Jack?” The word is small and full of disbelief, reluctant like Mac thinks if he says it out loud he’ll dispel the possibility of it being true.

“Yeah,” Jack breathes, forcing a small, thin smile. He nods, clears his throat, tries to sound strong and sure. Steady. “Yes, kid, it’s me.”

As soon as it’s clear that Mac has recognized him, that he knows who Jack is and is no longer in danger of hurting either of them, Jack releases his forearms, taking a step back to give Mac space. Mac himself doesn’t seem very keen on space at the moment, however, as he responds to Jack increasing the distance between them by stepping forward. He wavers, nearly collapsing before Jack catches him, steadying hands at his shoulders. Mac’s own hand grabs for Jack’s shirt, latching onto the open side of his jacket. His breathing has gone uneven and ragged and Jack is a little afraid he’s about to pass out or start sobbing.

“I didn’t,” Mac says in a voice that makes Jack think it’s going to be the second option. “I _didn’t_ \- I-”

“It’s okay, you’re okay. I’m sorry for scaring you, it’s all gonna be okay, you just gotta calm down.” Unfortunately, the reassurance doesn’t do much to actually reassure, and Mac only shakes his head. It makes Jack wince. That had to hurt.

“I promise, Jack, I didn’t- They kept- I didn’t know. I didn’t _know_.”

“It’s alright,” Jack says. It’s hard to keep his words even and strong but he does it, does it to keep Mac from descending further into panic. “It’s alright now. You’re safe.”

Mac is shaking. He’s shaking and he won’t hold eye contact, gaze flickering from meeting Jack’s to some indeterminate spot in the distance. “I didn’t know.”

The last word cracks at the same time Mac’s already flimsy composure does. The hand not hanging onto the jacket comes up to brush at the tears that have begun to track down his face. It’s a rough movement, almost angry, and it gives Jack a clear view of the bruise striped below Mac’s knuckles, and just like that, for a moment that ashen, coal-fire rage is back. The mark is quickly put to the side, however, when Jack realizes what Mac is doing. He’s trying to wrestle his breathing back under control, shaking harder than ever, trying to hide the fact that he’s crying.

Even after all that, being abducted, being tortured, running alone across states, here he is, exhausted and in pain, and still so intent on keeping everything hidden, keeping that pain locked away where no one can see it. Still so ashamed that somebody might catch him feeling something with that big old heart of his.

“Sorry. I- I can’t- Sorry,” Mac mutters, and that does it.

Jack releases his shoulders only to wrap his arms around the young man and pull him close, hugging Mac the way he’s wanted to since he first caught sight of him there on the kitchen floor. There’s a push against his chest and Jack loosens his hold, thinking for a moment Mac is trying to get away, only for the hand that had been gripping his jacket to extricate itself and just as quickly grab onto the fabric at Jack’s back. Mac is abruptly clinging to him with a strength he wouldn’t have guessed the guy still possessed in his current state.

“It’s okay,” Jack says, voice barely loud enough to be heard. “You can let it out. It’s just you and me, ain’t nobody else here. You're safe. You can let go.”

Prompted by the words, the comforting tone, Mac’s resolve shatters and he collapses like a puppet whose strings were slashed straight through. Jack holds him up as the sobs he’d been afraid were coming earlier finally arrived. He doesn’t know if the cries are out of the pain surely gripping Mac’s battered body, the fear and anxiety of the days he’s been gone, relief at finally having been found, or some combination of all of the above. Whatever the reason, it becomes clear that Mac is still trying to talk through it, all that’s able to be made out being the words ‘I didn’t know.’

“It’s alright,” Jack soothes, one arm wrapped around him, holding him up. His hand is pressed flat over the back of Mac’s rib cage and he can feel stuttering breaths and muffled cries pushing at his palm. His other hand gently combs through Mac’s still mysteriously wet hair, carefully undoing tangles while avoiding the terrible wound he’d caught sight of, the one staining blond reddish in a patch behind his ear. “You did so good.”

Ever a stubborn little bastard who just doesn’t know when to quit, Mac is still trying to talk. His hitching words trip over themselves and lose what comprehensible shape they may have held in the collar of Jack’s shirt, where his cold face has ended up pressed. Jack’s hand comes to rest at the back of Mac’s neck, squeezing lightly and trying to get his attention.

“Shh, c’mon, you’re gonna hurt yourself.” He squeezes Mac’s neck again and resumes brushing his fingers through damp hair. Jack hears another apology, barely audible, and he shakes his head. “No. No, don’t you dare apologize. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, nothing.”

This time it’s not a word but rather some indistinct sound, a hum of acceptance or repeated apology, Jack can’t tell.

“You did so good,” he says quietly, repeating himself and hoping it’ll sink in this time. “You did so good and I’m so proud of you.”

Jack sighs and lets the room lapse into quiet. He holds Mac against his chest as tightly as he dares, and watches out the window as the sun creeps up into the sky. The horizon is beginning to glow, gold and orange leaching into blue and making it look like someone has set a fire out there somewhere, far in the distance. Jack focuses on the sunrise and on breathing, on Mac’s breathing, which he can feel under his hand. It’s then, in the still and the peace of the earliest, newest part of the morning, that Jack notices it.

The shaking has stopped. Mac has calmed in his arms to the point that the shaking has stopped. All that’s left the occasional tremor, a shiver running through him. Jack nods and leaves his chin ducked down, cheek resting against the side of Mac’s head. He can let go know, he knows this. Mac is calm, no longer shaking. The embrace has served its purpose and settled him, comforted the young man, finally got through to him that he was safe. Jack himself, though…

It might take a little longer for Mac’s safety to sink in for Jack. So right now, he’s gonna keep on holding his boy, just until he can replace all the heartsick fear of the last two days with the relief of right now.

Finally, realizing reluctantly that he can’t stand here holding Mac forever, Jack clears his throat and eases back. He keeps Mac in his grip as he studies his face, one hand at his shoulder, the other lightly gripping the side of his neck. Swallowing back the urge to ask if he’s okay, a truly stupid question given their circumstances, Jack goes instead for a more specific inquiry.

“How bad are you hurt?” he asks, proud of the way his voice doesn’t waver or crack.

“Not bad,” Mac answers, hoarse but at least coherent. Jack raises an eyebrow and Mac gives a slight eye-roll. It’s a move that’s so completely him that Jack almost pulls him straight into another hug. “Pretty bad,” he admits, much quieter, “but not hospital bad.”

“Hospital bad by your standards or mine?” Jack can’t help but push the issue, not quite ready to trust Mac’s word on the topic of his own health. At least it’s not an actual emergency - Mac is realistic enough to have admitted if he was really in trouble.

“...It can wait.”

That’s good enough for Jack, who nods and glances over Mac’s shoulder out up the shallow hill outside. By now the sky has lightened enough that he can see the outlines of Riley and Bozer, standing close together right where he’d left them with the car. He admires their restraint - it had to be hellishly hard not to come charging down here, especially the longer it takes him to emerge from the cabin with Mac. Much as he would like to let Mac lay down and rest, sleep off the last couple days and everything they’d brought with them in one of the beds in the other room, draped in one of his grandmother’s quilts, Jack knows the rest of their team, the rest of their family has waited long enough.

It’s time to go home.

Taking a deep breath, Jack gives Mac’s shoulder a tiny shake and his first real, heartfelt smile since he got Riley’s call what feels like a lifetime ago now.

“Ready to go?”

“Yeah. Yes. Let’s go. Please.” The relieved tone in his voice speaks to a kind of tired no one that young should ever have felt. Decades of tired, ages of tired.

“It’s gonna be a real thing, keeping Boze and Riley from knocking you over the instant we get out there, so just keep behind me while I hold em off until their brains catch up, hey?”

Jack’s warning is rewarded with a light laugh, and it’s the best thing he’s heard all week. Hell, all year. He wraps an arm around Mac, half for support, half because he’s not quite ready to let his partner out of his hold just yet. They make their slow way through the cabin to the front door, and together they step out into the pale light of a new day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: moderately detailed description of major character injury


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so that took me a long time, didn't it. sorry everyone! i've been back in my hometown for my sibling's graduation and it's been.... rough. in any case i'm flying home today and wanted to get this posted before i left for the airport!
> 
> hope you enjoy this chapter of basically just mac being cared about, it was a struggle to write but i'm pretty happy with the end result. thanks as always for your wonderful comments, and feel free to say hi on tumblr, i'm located at altschmerzes!

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- The Mountain Goats, "Spent Gladiator 2"_

Stepping outside, Mac is blindsided not by the light bleeding pale and new across the Texan sky, but by the overwhelming feeling of being exposed. Pushing through those last few miles had only been possible by reminding himself that safety was so close, was just this far away, just over the next ridge. Leaving now is terrifying. The sound of a bird, flapping hard to take off, rise straight up from the dusty, shrub-dotted ground and into the sky, is harsh and sudden, sending Mac instinctively turning back towards the door. Back towards safety. Jack’s supportive hold on him tightens immediately, steadying him and keeping him from bolting back into the cabin.

“It’s okay.” Jack’s voice is calm and quiet, thought it sounds louder in the still of the early morning this far out from the nearest town, no noise pollution to muffle it. “You’re safe. We’re gonna walk up to Riley and Bozer, and we’re gonna let them fuss at you for a minute, and then we’re all gonna go home, okay? We’re gonna go home.”

 _Home. We’re gonna go home_.

Taking a moment to breathe through the sudden panic that had gone thundering through his chest when he’d exited his shelter, Mac hums his agreement and nods, looking over towards where Riley and Bozer stand at the top of the incline. They’re bunched together next to what is presumably a rental car, and Mac can’t remember ever being this happy to see them.

Jack does as he’d said he would inside the cabin, holding up a hand to forestall them greeting Mac before they can register the condition he’s in. Mac stands just behind his shoulder as he talks to them quietly, zoning out a little and not really processing what he’s saying. There’s just the hum of Jack’s voice, low and familiar, and the response of two other, differently pitched voices, also familiar. And then Jack is stepping to the side, and Mac focuses again, looking up to see Bozer stepping forward.

The way Bozer reaches for him is hesitant, overly cautious after Jack’s warning. His touch is feather light around Mac’s shoulders, palms barely making contact with his back, and Mac is having none of it. He hugs Bozer back fiercely, feels his best friend’s grip solidify in response. It’s an achievement, that he doesn’t cry again, doesn’t break down sobbing like he had when Jack held him in the kitchen, but it’s a near thing. Bozer’s embrace is familiar and Mac is reminded once again of the way his personality is so evident in the way he hugs people, pulling them close and holding on a with a solid, all-encompassing display of blatant affection he pours his whole heart into. Bozer hugs people like he loves them and wants them to know, and it’s always felt to Mac like coming home.

Mac pulls away sooner than he’d have liked to, mindful of both the fact that they don’t have all day, and that if he stays there too much longer he really will break down crying again with no way to reign it in. Bozer lets him go reluctantly, giving Mac one last light squeeze and then ducking his head, swiping at his damp eyes. Mac looks away towards where the fourth member of their little group has been hanging back.

Riley is next. She’s standing by the car still, and Mac’s eyes can’t seem to focus well enough to decipher the expression she wears, but he can see enough to establish that she looks as bad as he feels.

Well. Almost as bad.

If this were another place, another time, another why, Mac may have made a joke. He might’ve bumped his shoulder against hers and said, ‘I know why I look like this, what’s your excuse?’ But he feels fragile and fragmented and Riley is hanging back like she’s scared to come over to him, so rather than make light he wordlessly holds out a hand, a wide open gesture. The meaning is clear.

_Come here, Ri. Please._

It’s a request she doesn’t deny him. While she’d been more hesitant than Bozer, more reluctant to approach him to begin with, she’s less cautious when she gets to him. Riley wraps her arms around him, tucks her face into his neck, and holds on. Mac slumps a little, his body folding into hers, arms coming up around her waist. Her grip is hard and slightly painful, but Mac wouldn’t for anything tell her to let go. She’s okay. She’s here and she’s okay and she’s hugging him a little too tight and Mac wouldn’t trade it for the world.

She’s okay. They’re all okay. Somehow, _somehow_ his family is okay.

Riley pulls back after a shorter time than he’d disentangled from Bozer, holding Mac’s face between her hands, carefully avoiding the worst of the damage. It’s then he notices she’s shaking. Small tremors are running through her arms down to her fingers, and if he’d felt a little bit less inches from death himself, Mac might have been able to focus enough to be worried, to wonder why she looks so bad.

With the promised fussing out of the way, Mac allows Jack and Bozer to assist him into the backseat of the car. He sinks into the seat, surrounded by the artificial smell of rental vehicles and the muffled sounds of Jack talking outside. Mac leans back against the headrest and closes his eyes. It’s not time to sleep yet, he knows that. There’s too much danger still, too much of a question as to all of their continued safety. No, even if he’d tried, Mac is thrumming with far too much anxiety to sleep. So he waits for what he’s sure is Jack telling either Bozer or Riley to watch over him while he drives, itching to get going already.

When the car door opposite him opens, Mac’s eyes snap open, his breathing quickening and his heart in his throat. It takes several moments for two things to permeate the thick fog shrouding Mac’s bruised head. First, the person who’d opened the door isn’t a threat, isn’t someone who would- who _could_ hurt him. Second, that person isn’t Bozer or Riley. It’s Jack.

Jack gets into the car and closes the door, followed a few moments later by Bozer in the driver’s seat and Riley riding shotgun. Mac blinks at them, then looks over to Jack.

“You’re…” It’s hard to collect the words, to pull the right ones out of the swarm of words available to him, much less arrange them in the right order and coerce them out of his mouth in any kind of comprehensible form. “Not driving?”

The look given to him then is one Mac was never accustomed to seeing from anyone until Jack Dalton made an entrance into his life. It’s the look that says plainly ‘that was some real dense shit you just said, kid.’ An annoying look, really, given Mac himself usually can’t pinpoint what it is Jack thinks is so dumb in what he’s said.

“No,” Jack says, warm and fond. “I’m not driving.”

The car starts with the sound of the engine turning over, a dull mechanical roar that has Mac flinching in his seat. Somehow he’s ended up in the middle seat of the bench in the back of the unfamiliar vehicle, and if that means he’s leaning against Jack, well, he’s too tired to move. Too tired to move and too tired to muster an ‘I’m fine’ when Jack shifts, lifting the arm trapped between them and and settling it around Mac.

The fact doesn’t escape Mac that Riley is watching him in the rearview mirror, that Bozer is glancing periodically back as well, though his focus remains primarily on the road. It’s with this awareness and the faith that neither of his friends will hold this behavior against him, what with the whole ‘kidnapped and tortured’ thing, that Mac allows himself to shift in his seat, turning a little towards Jack, leaning a little harder. To his credit, Jack doesn’t verbally acknowledge it at all. He says nothing, but rubs his hand over Mac’s arm. It’s a comforting movement and Mac closes his eyes and hopes it’s over soon.

The relative peace of the moment doesn’t last long. They must have at some point left the deserted regional road for a more frequented highway, as the sounds of other cars can be heard outside. They’re on this newer road for a handful of minutes before it happens, before the sound of a truck horn blares next to them, catapulting Mac back to the luggage compartment of a bus, back to fists and pain and an air horn.

“I _didn’t_ -” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, the protest to invisible captors that he hadn’t been sleeping dying in his throat when it catches up to him that he’s not there anymore, that he’s in a car, with Riley and Bozer and Jack.

“Easy.” Jack’s voice is soft and almost sad, his hand moving up and down Mac’s arm again. “Easy, kid. You’re safe. We’ve got you.”

Mac settles again, heart still pounding. He ducks his chin once more and mutters, “Sorry.”

There’s a quiet snort from somewhere above his head, Jack’s voice back again a second later. It’s barely a rebuke, toothless and impossible to mistake for angry, but still Mac cringes when he says it.

“Man, I’d bet anything you could not, with all your big giant brain and all your genius, explain to me what it is you think you’re apologizing for right now.”

“Sorry.”

“Mac.”

Another ‘sorry’ almost slips out before Mac catches it. Instead he just shakes his head. The movement disturbs the deep bruise on his cheek, the wound behind his ear throbbing dully. He may have caught the apology but the low whine makes it out. If his injuries prove non-lethal, which it seems like at this point they will, the embarrassment of this day is going to kill him when it sinks in. He’s practically plastered to Jack’s side at this point, tucked under his arm like some sick kid wanting to be held and reassured. And damn if Jack isn’t just indulging him, making another gentle hushing sound.

The drive lapses into a haze of almost-sleep mixed with moments of jolting panic sending his eyes open and his heart pounding. By the time they pull into the gas station and come to a stop, Mac’s headache has grown, pounding at his temples and making it hard for him to string thoughts together. He watches dully as Jack gets out of the car. Leaning back against the seat, Mac tries to breathe evenly. All he has to do is hold it together until they get back to California. Just until they’re back to California.

The stop for gas is brief and rushed. Jack leaves Riley and Bozer in the car with Mac while he makes a quick phone call to let Matty know what’s happened. He hangs up with her words ringing in his ears, telling him ‘You did good, Dalton.’

 _Did good_ , he thinks, shaking his head and snorting. _I didn’t_ do _anything. I couldn’t._

On the rest of the way to the regional airstrip at which waits the jet that will carry them back to Los Angeles, Jack watches Mac closely, and is increasingly alarmed by what he sees. It’s counterintuitive - Mac would seem to an outside point of view to be doing progressively better. He’s separated himself from Jack somewhat, sitting up on his own strength and looking out the window. His hand are held in his lap, clasped together in a way that makes Jack wince, given the bruising on the back of one of them so deep and harsh looking it makes him wonder if one of the bones might be broken. Mac is shaking less, and is able to answer questions, though his voice is strained and his sentences short. Despite this outward appearance of having pulled himself together, though, Jack is more worried now than he’d been before, during Mac’s uncharacteristically skittish behavior.

It’s worrying because Jack knows, having been here before, that Mac isn’t feeling better, not that quickly. He’s still in pain, in more ways than one, he’s just coherent enough to start hiding it, to plaster on a brave face and sit with his head straight up rather than giving in to the exhaustion and letting himself rest against Jack’s shoulder. It’s not a reaction Jack suspects is particularly healthy, to respond to major trauma by shutting down and pretending he’s fine as soon as he’s able to.

But while it isn’t healthy, it’s not surprising either. So Jack just does what he always does, and tries to combat the shutdown by being careful and gentle, talking to him like he’s still visibly shaken. He explains to Mac quietly that Matty’s got a medical team on standby for when they get home, that Bozer’s gonna take care of what he can on the plane and they’ve got a room ready for him back at HQ. Mac doesn’t react to Jack’s cautious treatment of him, doesn’t insist that he’s fine or roll his eyes, which only further bolsters Jack’s theory that he isn’t doing as well as he’s pretending to be.

It still makes Jack nervous to not be taking Mac to the hospital immediately. He’s obviously seriously injured, and although Jack believes him when he says it’s not an emergency, it’s not an arrangement he’s comfortable with. The one thing he finds reassuring is the knowledge of Bozer’s industrial first-aid kit, stashed on the plane. They’ll be able to patch him up a little, at least until Phoenix medical can take over.

Bozer goes to get the kit while Jack helps Mac onto the plane, guiding him to the couch where he sits down and closes his eyes. The look on his face is acute relief, the shaking briefly increasing as the reality crashes over him. Jack stands beside where he sits on the couch and rests his hand on the kid’s shoulder, lending support.

“How’re you holdin’ up?” Jack asks in a low voice. Mac doesn’t answer verbally, just nods. It’s easy to guess what’s going on. It’s real, now, with the familiar walls of the plane around them, the sound of the engines starting. “You’re gonna be just fine, Mac. Boze here is gonna help you once we’re in the air, and when he’s got you all fixed up, you’re gonna lay down and get some sleep. We’ll be home before you know it.” Another shallow nod, and Jack sits down.

Takeoff is swift and easy, something going right for once in the last couple of days. Once they are in the air and cruising at an altitude permitting movement throughout the body of the plane, Jack gets up and moves aside, allowing Bozer room to access his patient. Mac is either not confused about why Bozer is the one rendering first aid and how he got so competent at doing so, or he’s too tired and fuzzy-headed to ask. Whichever the case may be, he wordlessly lets Bozer begin to treat the collection of wounds he’s wound up with over the course of the whole ordeal.

With the explanation back at the house, Jack knew that Bozer had been doing well in the class he’d apparently been taking, that he’s learned how to render relatively advanced medical care, but knowing that it is different than seeing it in person. Bozer’s hands are practiced and sure, holding Mac’s wrists in a careful grip and wrapping the damage done by the cuffs like he’s done so a dozen times before. Mac bows his head easily when Bozer tilts it forward and to the side, allowing access to the injury behind his ear, the one that had knocked him out to begin with.

It’s easier, Jack muses, than Mac has ever submitted to medical attention before, and he’s beginning to think that Bozer’s training might’ve been a good idea for more reasons than were immediately apparent. While Mac would allow medical professionals to treat him when necessary, he’d never been what could be called an easy patient, too suspicious and skittish when seriously hurt and too stubborn when minorly to moderately knocked around but forced to an ER nonetheless. Now though he’s not shying away from Bozer’s touch or jerking his head away to eye the patch of gauze and tape brought to the side of his head, like he would under less familiar touch.

Once everything Bozer can do for him has been done - and it’s a fair amount, all things considered - he packs the kit away and sits down. He looks tired to the core, they all do by now. Bozer pulls his hoodie tightly around himself, leans sideways in his seat, and rests his cheek against the leather back. Usually he would sleep now. Usually, they would all sleep now, strung out and exhausted with several hours on a plane ahead of them. Not this time, though. This time, Bozer curls up in his seat and looks like he’s tired but sleep is the last thing on his mind, beside him Riley doing the same, knees pulled to her chest and fingers picking at the seam of her jeans. She looks wide awake, eyes blinking a little too rapidly and a slight tremor in her hands.

Speaking of tremors, when Jack looks back to Mac, he sees that his young partner has started to shake again, harder than he had in the car. He’s sitting in the corner of the couch, bandaged wrists laying in his lap, still looking like he’s playing dress-up in the too-big ACDC shirt that can’t be providing much warmth. Jack walks to the back of the plane and fishes out one of the blankets kept there.

“Hey,” he says quietly, getting Mac’s attention. “Why don’t you lay down, let the painkillers kick in a bit. Get some sleep.”

“I can’t,” Mac mutters, looking around the plane. “I’ve gotta- We’re not- I can’t. I have to…” He gives a vague gesture around, the meaning of which Jack can only guess at.

“No.” Jack sits down on the couch next to him. “No, you don’t. There’s nothing you’ve gotta do right now. You did exactly what you were supposed to do, you did what you should’ve done. You got yourself out and you went somewhere you were safe. But we’ve got you now. So it’s time to let us take over, okay?”

Mac wordlessly stares at him for a few long moment, anxiety just visible in his eyes, until finally he nods, and the resistance melts out of him. With Jack’s help, Mac lays down on the couch, legs curled and arms folded up close to his chest. He scrunches his eyes tightly shut, face angled down towards the cushion. Jack knows him well enough to recognize the headache causing Mac to turn away from the harsh lighting in the plane. Usually he would bury his face against the couch, but the nasty impact marks from whatever they’d knocked him out with, now covered by steri strips and gauze, prevent him from being able to turn completely away from the light that is surely aggravating the concussion-induced headache.

With a deep sigh, Jack reaches down towards that face with its crumpled up expression. As soon as he makes contact with Mac’s forehead, Mac’s eyes fly open and his head jerks in a violent flinch. The breath in his chest hitches and kicks audibly, and Jack’s own lungs constrict in response.

“Sorry,” he says, guilt pulsing inside his ribcage, battering at his heart. “Sorry, kid, I should’ve warned you. Was just gonna block the light, I know it’s hurting your head. Okay?”

After having some time to breathe through it and calm down, Mac gives a shallow nod, eyes once again closing. Jack gently lays his hand over Mac’s eyes, blocking the lighting of the plane from being able to worsen the pain in his head. As the seconds tick by, Mac’s rigid posture loosens, stiff body relaxing back into the cushions incrementally. Jack sits beside him without speaking, hand carefully shielding his eyes from the light, and waiting. It takes longer than it usually does after even bad missions, but eventually Mac’s breathing evens out, and he sleeps without interruption from the sky over West Texas right until the plane touches down in Los Angeles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: just continued depiction of major character injury!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost to the end of the road here, can you believe it?? man what am i gonna do with myself when this fic is over. i haven't the faintest idea.
> 
> anyway, thank you again for your wonderful comments and continued support, and i hope you continue to enjoy this project of mine as we begin to wrap things up.
> 
> also, apologies for just making up a bunch of shit about phoenix medical, i did a little completely unsubstantiated worldbuilding i thought might be neat (and convenient).

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- The Mountain Goats, "Spent Gladiator 2"_

The reception waiting for them back at Phoenix HQ is overwhelming. A team from medical meets them at the door, ushering Mac quickly inside. Observing this, what Bozer is struck by isn’t the swift, efficient work of the medical team, though he is grateful for it, but rather the comments from nearly everyone they run into on their way through the building towards where Mac is being escorted. Matty’s assistant Andie sees them first, and her face breaks into a look of open relief.

“Glad to see you home. _All_ of you,” she says, and while Jack turns to speak briefly her, Bozer feels a hand on his arm. He turns to see Jill standing there, wearing a look almost identical to Andie’s. He smiles at her and she wordlessly squeezes his arm.

They have a handful more moments like that. You’d think they’d have been gone weeks, rather than a few days. Two members of their regular exfil team stop to pass on their well wishes for Mac’s swift recovery. Another field agent they’ve collaborated with a few times shows up as well.

“We would’ve all been out there looking,” she says, face and voice serious, intent. “Word got out, that you couldn’t go after him, that Oversight or whoever wouldn’t allow it. We’re glad he got out,” Bozer cringes, and immediately schools his face, hoping he didn’t just give it away that he hadn’t exactly got out all on his own, “but we all wanted to be sure you knew, nobody was happy with the orders. We all would’ve been out looking with you if we could.”

Bozer is gratified and yes, somewhat overwhelmed, at the expression of support being shown to them at large and to Mac specifically. He’s fiercely grateful to these people for caring, for demonstrating to him that Mac matters, that it hadn’t just been them suffering alone in that house, waiting. Someone else would’ve noticed, would’ve cared, if Mac had just disappeared. If they hadn’t got him back, it would have _mattered_.

Phoenix medical doesn’t look much like the hospitals Bozer has had opportunity to see the inside of. The more general area, for evaluations and the like, is enough like one, sure, but further though it are the more private rooms, designed for more extended periods of recovery and care more complicated than ‘throw some stitches in it and tape a bit of gauze’. It has far less of a clinical feeling through there, more like a hotel equipped for minor to moderate medical emergencies. That is where they’ve taken Mac to now, medical personnel inside getting him situated and seen by a doctor, while Bozer is left to wait on a bench in the hallway, across from Riley, Jack pacing up and down the floor between them.

After a while, the head doctor in charge of Phoenix medical rounds the corner, all eyes on her right away. It would be difficult, had Bozer not previously been introduced to Dr. Valerie Katz, to identify her as a doctor. She’s not dressed as one, appearing more like someone working in a corporate office or a law firm, and there’s no tell-tale stethoscope or ID clipped to her jacket. There’s no mistaking her commanding air, the presence she carries with her into a room, though. This is a person who knows what she’s doing. As she approaches, Jack’s pacing stills and Riley’s attention snaps over to her.

“MacGyver is going to be just fine,” Valerie says immediately. She’s clearly been around the block with them before, once or twice or a dozen times, and knows by now to establish that right off the bat.

The relief is immediate and tangible. They’d all suspected he would be okay, that his injuries were minor enough to not leave lasting damage in their wake, but it’s different to hear it from the doctor herself. Jack sits swiftly, all but collapsing onto the bench next to Bozer, while Riley nods with a sharp, audible inhale.

Valerie continues after giving them a moment to absorb the information, process that Mac really would be alright. She explains that, on top of the obvious, the handcuff wounds to his wrists and the places on his face and head where he’d been struck during the initial abduction, Mac is sleep deprived, dehydrated, and had at some point suffered what looked like several severe beatings.

As she’s listing the damage caused, Bozer looks at the floor, feels his chest constrict. He’s never going to get used to this, never going to be able to reconcile his best friend, kind and sunny with an infectious laugh, with a life of threat and violence. Knowing that Mac has been hurt like this (far from the first time, not even in the top five worst times he’s been hurt) it’s monumentally difficult for Bozer to wrap his mind around. Despite seeing it as many times as he has by now, those moments of helplessly witnessing Mac in pain, driving him to pursue medical training of his own, it still feels so unreal. Every time, unreal.

“So we can go in?” Jack asks, the question that’s on Bozer’s mind as well, and surely Riley’s too, given her expression.

“Yes,” Valerie confirms. “He’s asleep now, but I knew you were going to want to be with him anyway, so I’ve gone ahead and had his room set up so you can be there with him as long as you like. There’s not much left he needs from us, just time to rest and heal. His injuries aren’t dangerous, they’re just going to be hurting him pretty bad for the near future. It’s a good thing they were treated as soon as they were, who was that, by the way?”

Bozer raises a hand sheepishly. “That’d be me. Wilt Bozer, we’ve met.”

“I believe we have indeed, Mr. Bozer, and may I say that was some good work you did there.” Valerie steps over for a handshake, approval shining in her face. “The sooner an injury is treated the better, and you’ve saved your friend some trouble there.”

The praise makes Bozer blush, and he thanks her, embarrassed.

“Now go on, get in there before you explode,” Valerie tells them, turning towards Jack. “That means you, Dalton. We’d rather not have to replace the floor and if you keep going like you’ve been, you’ll wear a track in it.” The light tone of teasing from the serious woman makes Bozer laugh a little, a chuckle he’s surprised to find is genuine.

Valerie takes her leave then, walking past them towards her office, and together all three of them stand. Riley walks quickly around the corner to where Mac’s room can be found, but before they can follow, Bozer catches Jack by the arm. The confused, displeased look leveled at him may have cowed him before, but Bozer doesn’t back down.

“You need to do something about Riley,” he says, keeping his voice down lest the subject of the instruction overhear him. “She’s worn herself into the ground and she needs to rest. If she doesn’t, we’re gonna be sitting by two hospital beds instead of one.”

Jack looks past Bozer towards where Riley has disappeared around the corner. He nods, shallow and slow, an unconscious acknowledgement of what Bozer has said.

“Yeah, I know,” he mutters, sounding weary. There’s heartache in Jack’s face, and Bozer thinks that he can relate. Nothing about this has been easy, and there’s a pain in Bozer’s chest that hasn’t subsided once since the voicemail.

“So you’ll talk to her?”

“I’ll talk to her. We’ll take care of it, Boze, she’ll be okay. We’re all gonna be okay.”

Feeling a lot better about, well, everything, Bozer follows in Riley’s footsteps and heads into Mac’s room, Jack close behind him. The room is painted in calm, greyed blue, with a low couch at the far wall and a couple, more comfortable than hospital-issue chairs. Riley is standing near the bed in which Mac sleeps, eyes on his lax face and shaking hands hidden under folded arms.

Bozer walks straight to one of the chairs, sitting down and readying himself to spend at least the next couple of hours here. He reaches under the railing and takes one of Mac’s hands, the one closest to him and without the splint encasing the other. One of the bones in Mac’s right hand is fractured, cracked beneath the impact mark Bozer had seen when tending to his wrists. They broke his hand along with his phone when they’d hit him with what the doctor guessed had been a crowbar, or a tire iron, and it’s a sickening thought. Bozer carefully avoids the white bandaging hiding the injuries left by the cuffs and curls that hand between both of his, intertwining their fingers and laying his other palm over the back of it.

Mac doesn’t respond to the touch, but his hand is warm and alive, which is more than Bozer could have said for certain mere hours earlier. Feeling the last couple of days catch up to him, he puts his head down on the railing and watches Mac breathe. The rise and fall of Mac’s chest is steady and even, and it’s the best thing Bozer’s probably ever seen. Behind him, he can hear Riley start to pace much like Jack had been in the hallway. Just as he’s about to sit up and say something about it himself, Jack steps in.

“Riley,” he says softly. The pacing doesn’t stop, and Jack repeats her name, a little louder this time. “Riley.”

The footfalls halt, Riley coming to a stop at the foot of the bed. Bozer turns his head to watch the interaction unfolding, hoping that Jack can get through to her. Jack walks over to her and takes her shoulders in a gentle grip.

“It’s time to get some sleep, Ri,” he says, and his voice is soft the way Bozer’s heard it get with Mac sometimes, on the really bad days. The days where he’d called Jack himself, worried and out of his depth. “The couch is just right here, blankets are in the closet. They set it up like this for a reason, they know folks like us don’t like to leave a teammate alone when they’ve been downed.”

Riley shakes her head once, gaze flicking over to Mac, then back to Jack, who still has a hold on her shoulders. “I can’t, he…”

“Is gonna be fine,” Jack finishes. “Mac is hurt, but we brought him home, and he’s gonna be _fine_. You did so good, and I’m so proud of you. You helped bring him home, you kept track of him and watched over him when nobody else could. You were his big sister when he needed you to be, but he’s home now. He’s okay. You can rest. You can sleep.”

There’s a moment where Bozer thinks that Riley is going to argue, is going to insist on staying up until Mac wakes again, seems like he’s returned to some kind of baseline. But the moment passes and she exhales, posture slumping in acquiescence.

“Okay,” she says quietly, and Jack gives her shoulders a squeeze before walking around to the cupboard containing extra blankets. Many a vigil has been sat in these rooms, and those in charge of putting them together obviously know how to play to their audience.

While Jack goes about setting up the couch for her, Riley walks back over to the bed. Bozer’s eyes follow her as she goes, and despite now standing not two feet away from him, Riley doesn’t acknowledge him outside of a brief look towards him and a slight twitch of her mouth that was maybe trying to be a smile. She looks down at Mac, one hand, unsteady with exhaustion and what Bozer judges to be entirely too much caffeine, reaching out to rest her palm over his forehead. Riley stays like that until Jack finishes making up the couch, and when it’s ready, she hesitates at leaving Mac’s side. She wavers for a second before leaning down and kissing Mac on the cheek. With one last brush of her fingers over his forehead, she walks away from the bed.

Bozer watches her go, watches Jack pull the blanket up over her and around her shoulders. Her eyes drift shut and after a few instances of snapping sharply open again as though startled, she seems to finally have fallen asleep. Jack nods, satisfied, and walks over to where Bozer still sits, not having moved once since he sat down.

“I’m gonna step outside real quick, give a call to…” Jack cringes, glancing around, and Bozer frowns. “To our friend at home.”

Oh, right. Patricia Thornton is still at his house, probably pacing around his living room waiting for an update. Bozer acknowledges Jack’s announcement with a dip of his chin, settling back down with his head against the railing. He hears Jack’s footsteps cross the room, pausing next to him. Jack’s hand touches Bozer’s shoulder, squeezing for a few seconds before releasing him. He sees the same hand enter his field of vision to run briefly over Mac’s hair then disappear, and just like that, Jack is gone, the door to the room closing quietly behind him.

With Jack gone, Riley asleep, and Mac out for the count, Bozer feels almost as if he’s been left alone, and it’s a slightly eerie feeling. He sighs and tightens his grip around Mac’s hand just a little, thumb rubbing across his knuckles, catching slightly on minute imperfections, tiny scars left behind by dozens of experiments that went in small or large ways wrong on him. The monitors tracking Mac’s vitals are almost hypnotic in their even, repetitive sound. It becomes difficult for Bozer to resist falling asleep himself, though he does combat the urge. It feels important that he stay awake, stay on guard. After all, it’s only him left, now. He can sleep when Jack gets back. He’ll just stay awake until then.

* * *

Before they’d left, Patti had given Jack a piece of paper, on which was scrawled the number of a burner phone. He holds that piece of paper now, looking at the familiar handwriting on it and typing the numbers into his phone. It barely finishes through the first ring before there’s a click and Patti’s voice on the other end.

“Did you get him?”

“Yeah,” Jack breathes, sure he sounds as exhausted as he feels, “we’ve got him. He’s home, he’s safe. He’s messed up, they hurt him pretty bad, but Doc V says he should be up and at ‘em before too long. No permanent damage, which I was relieved to hear. His wrists looked pretty dicey there, they…” Jack stops talking abruptly, a countermeasure against the tremor in his lips, the way he’s sure his voice would’ve started shaking if he’d pushed on. He breathes heavily for a moment, Patti staying quiet on the other end as well until he gets his emotions under control. “They cuffed him and it… There was some damage. But it’ll heal, he’ll be alright.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

Jack knows what he has to say next, but even as he knows it, he doesn’t want to have to. It’s been like a dream, in some ways, knowing that Patti is there at Mac and Bozer’s house, free and innocent of what she’d been imprisoned for. But like all dreams, it will eventually come to an end. Breathing in and out, one measured breath, Jack speaks again.

“This can’t last forever, Patti. We need to get Nikki, and we’re gonna need your help to do it, but before we can do that, we need to call it in. Clear your name.”

For a long pause, she doesn’t say anything, and Jack can imagine her face as she ponders her reality.

“...Tell Matty Webber that I’m on my way in,” she says, and he can still picture her expression, determination and acceptance.

He nods, though she can’t see him. “I’ll tell her. Good luck.”

Without another word the line goes dead, and Jack is left wondering if he’s just condemned her.

Before he can spend too long thinking on this, who should round the corner, but Matty herself. Jack freezes when he sees her, wondering for a split second if she might have heard him talking on the phone. It quickly becomes clear she hadn’t, however, when she speaks.

“I hear our boy wonder is back in one piece,” she says, straight to business.

“Yes, he is,” Jack confirms, and Matty seems relieved.

“Good, good. I hear we owe NCIS a thank you.” She doesn’t elaborate beyond that, the twinkle in her eye making it clear she knows exactly what she’s talking about.

“Yeah,” Jack confirms, a slight smile pulling at his mouth. “We owe NCIS a very big thank you. NCIS, Steve McGarrett, the Colton family… We owe them all for bringin’ him home safe.”

“And how is he?”

Jack is all ready to repeat what he’d said to Patti, confirm that the damage is significant but will heal completely, but something stops him. Something about the look on Matty’s face, the shrewd way she seems to be peering directly into his brain, makes Jack stop and think about the question.

How is he?

It sends Jack delving back into the state Mac had been in when he’d found him in the kitchen of the cabin. The panic and fear he’d seen comes rushing back, the memory of how it felt to hold Mac while he cried and shook so hard Jack had been afraid he might shake right apart a sharp, wounding ache in Jack’s chest that just mounts the longer the memory persists.

“Mac is…” Jack says, the words sticking in his throat. “He’s gonna be fine.”

He’d been bleeding on the floor, when Jack found him. Bleeding and beaten and so out of his mind he’d taken time to even _recognize_ Jack. Tortured. Mac had been tortured.

“Jack?” The question goes completely over Jack’s head as the images keep coming, every terrible thought he’s had over the past few days, the way he’d been found...

“He’s gonna be fine. He’s- He’s gonna be-” As Jack speaks, his words begin to falter. Breathy, short gasps begin to punctuate his speech and he feels light headed. Matty’s wordless hand guides him to a bench at the side of the hall and Jack collapses onto it. His chest is still heaving, and he can dimly hear himself still trying to speak. “He’s- Oh, god, he was-”

“I know.” Matty’s voice is quiet and sympathetic, her hand staying on his shoulder. “I know.”

“His _wrists_ , his _head_ , Matty, they- When I _saw him_ he-” The words are choked off by another sudden, quick breath. It feels like he can’t get enough air in. Jack shakes his head, trying to stamp down the helpless fear and grief he feels every time Mac is hurt. It doesn’t make sense, Mac is home - why now?

But he’s spent the last couple of days stamping it down, holding it together, and it won’t be restrained any more. He buries his face in his hands as the turmoil threatens to consume him, Matty’s touch the only point of grounding.

“Why am I… _What’s_ …”

“This is a perfectly normal reaction,” Matty says soothingly, patient and calm. “The danger is over and your boy’s home so your brain knows it’s safe to let go and feel everything you couldn’t while he was gone. Just breathe, Jack. You said it yourself. He’s gonna be fine.”

Jack doesn’t know if he’s about to punch a wall or cry, and frankly he would rather not do either, so he focuses on getting his breathing under control, repeating it to himself. _He’s gonna be fine. Mac is gonna be fine_.

“There you go.” The approval is evident in her voice. “Nice and slow, Jack.” The use of his first name doesn’t escape Jack’s awareness, disoriented though it is, nor does the kind, ridicule-free tone she says it in, eons away from her usual exasperated _‘Jack’_. “Mac is safe, and he’s going to be okay.”

Time passes strangely in moments like these, and Jack doesn’t know how much of it slips by before he starts to be able to think clearly again. Jack’s shoulders heave up and down, the first deep breath he’s been able to catch since the panic set in. Matty murmurs again, “He’s okay.”

Now that he is thinking clearly, the assertion sticks wrong in Jack’s brain, and he can’t help but respond, “Well. Physically.”

The counter clarification seems to draw Matty up short and she frowns at him. “What do you mean, ‘physically’?”

“I mean,” Jack says, “that we know Mac is gonna be okay _physically_ , but mentally? Emotionally? Kinda up in the air. Especially considering I’m gonna have to have to tell him that the reason we took so long to get him is because we weren’t even out there _looking_.”

“Okay, bypassing the fact that you had _absolutely_ no choice in that and neither did I,” Matty says, making her point at the same time she breezes past it, in typical Matty fashion, “if you think it’s going to hurt him that badly, consider that you don’t have to tell him. Not until things settle down and he’s had time to recover, at least.”

“Oh, it’s been considered,” Jack replies shortly. And it has been. He’d dismissed the idea almost as soon as he’d had it. Jack can live with himself if he doesn’t get absolution, if Mac doesn’t forgive him for failing in his role as partner, protector, older-brother-surrogate-parent. What he can’t live with is carrying that failure inside him, secret and hidden while it eats him alive.

Besides, there’s another aspect here that makes him certain that telling Mac, and telling him soon, is the only viable option.

“He’s gonna find out one way or another,” Jack continues, “and he’s not gonna hear it from someone else. I wouldn’t do that to him. No, he deserves to hear that from me.”

Matty seems to accept that. “Alright. Fair enough. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

Jack feels a surge of gratitude towards Matty. He knows the offer is sincere and wholeheartedly meant, that if he asked her to this formidable woman would move mountains for their family. It’s with this thought in his head that he remembers an earlier conversation and clears his throat, preparing to take a huge risk.

“There is something, actually,” he says. She motions for him to elaborate and he does after a reluctant pause. “Patricia Thornton.”

“What about her?” Matty asks, immediately guarded and suspicious.

“She’s on her way to turn herself in. I need you to promise me that before you do anything, before you put her in custody, before you take her back to prison, talk to her. Talk to Mac. Hear what they both have to say, and use your judgement. Can you do that?” While he waits for her to answer, Jack finds himself holding his breath, hoping he hasn’t just blown it all for his former boss. Matty levels him with a hard look, studying his face, for what he isn’t sure.

“I’ll hear her out,” Matty says slowly, voice stern, “but I can’t promise anything past that.”

Relief floods Jack like adrenaline, cold spikes down his shoulders. “Thank you, Matty. Thank you.”

She inclines her chin in recognition of his gratitude and touches his shoulder again, giving it a squeeze and a pat before tipping her head back down the hall. “Now get back there. Wouldn’t want blondie to wake up and find you gone, he might think the world’s ended.”

Jack manages a soft chuff of laughter at that.

“And let me know when he’s awake, will you? I’d like to stop by and see him.”

“Of course.”

He watches her leave quickly down the hall, surely headed to prepare to receive the incoming fugitive. It’s a weight off Jack to know that Matty will give Patti a fair shake, hear her out and hear Mac out as well. Once Mac describes Nikki’s involvement in his abduction, it will be impossible to deny that something had gone very, very wrong in the uncovering of Chrysalis, and Patti is going to be okay.

But there’s nothing Jack can do about that now. The only thing he can do is go back to Mac’s room and hope he figures out how to tell him about the order that hamstrung them and left them unable to come for him before that unimaginable conversation is staring him in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: brief description of injuries and violence, as well as depiction of what's probably a panic attack


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this cannot POSSIBLY be the end, there's no way i've finished this fic. except i have?? 
> 
> thank you all so much for all your wonderful support, a special thank you to those of you who've been following this project of mine since the beginning. i appreciate you so much, you're what makes this so worth it. 
> 
> i hope you've had fun with this, i know i have, and i hope you're ready for the last chapter.

> _Stay in the game_
> 
> _Just try to play through the pain_
> 
> _Like a fighter who's been told_
> 
> _It's finally time for him to quit_
> 
> _Show up in shining colors_
> 
> _And then stand there and get hit_
> 
> _\- The Mountain Goats, "Spent Gladiator 2"_

Being back in Mac and Bozer’s house is an odd feeling. The map still lays out on the kitchen island, the remnants of all the things they’d felt and gone through in that building while Mac was gone evident in every direction. Jack had cleaned up as best he could while Riley and Bozer brought Mac in from the car, but the map is still there. He hadn’t known what to do with it, so he left it there. Now he wishes he hadn’t. Mac is asleep in his room, Bozer and Riley out to rent a video from some novelty DVD rental place Bozer has an affinity for, which leaves Jack alone with the map and the quiet house.

It’s a win for him, Jack thinks, that he’s managed to restrain himself from posting up in Mac’s room, sitting next to him with a hand laid over his chest, feeling the rise and fall of breathing under his palm. It’s an instinct he reigns in with considerable effort, walking aimless circles around the common area of the house, trying to bleed off leftover nervous energy. Jack comes to a rest at the kitchen island, looking back down for what feels like the millionth time at that map, still bearing Riley and Patti’s markers.

The thought of Patti takes Jack’s mind out of the house and across the city, back to the Foundation where hopefully Matty is sorting out at least part of the mess the Organization has left them with. Mac had woken shortly after Jack returned to the room, grabbing onto Bozer’s wrist and babbling agitatedly about Nikki, how she was involved, how Patti had been framed, that she was in prison for something she didn’t do. It had taken time to calm him down, to get through to him that they already knew, that Patti was on her way in now and that if anybody could figure things out, it was Matty. Jack only hopes that he’d been right, that Matty would find and believe the truth, that Patti would be cleared and Nikki caught, after all this time and heartache. Shaking his head, Jack leans his elbow on the countertop and pinches the bridge of his nose.

The sound of his phone going off in his pocket startles Jack out of his thought process. He fishes the device out and squints at the name displayed on the screen, then answers it.

“Hey, Steve,” he says, greeting his old friend, the one he’d called when this all went to hell in the first place.

“Jack, man, I got your text. Got your kid back, huh?” Steve’s voice is familiar and bright, and Jack leans once more against the surface of the island, closing his eyes for a brief moment to absorb the reassurance that familiarity brings with it.

“Yeah, yeah we did,” Jack confirms, a tired smile forming on his face. “With a whole village of help. He’s asleep in his room now.”

“And how is he, is he okay?”

When the conversation began, Jack already held an immense amount of gratitude towards Steve McGarrett. The question only serves to increase that, a warmth borne of the genuine concern expressed for the wellbeing of someone Steve had never even _met_ , his only connection to Mac being that he mattered to Jack.

“Yeah, he’ll be alright.” _And I’m gonna be here every step of the way until he is._

“And when he’s all healed up, you’ll bring those kids of yours down here and introduce me to them proper, right?” There’s humor in Steve’s voice, gentle teasing, and Jack’s smile widens.

“Sure,” he answers good naturedly. “You’ll get to meet ‘em.” It’s a fun thought, getting to show his family off to his old friend. Steve would get a kick out of meeting them, and he can only imagine what kind of field day they’d have with the kind of stories Jack is sure Steve would tell about him from back in the day. Besides, he could use a bit of a break. They all could, after this.

They talk for a few more minutes, Jack thanking Steve profusely for sending him to Sam Hanna. In all honesty, Jack doesn’t know if they’d have ever found him, if Mac would’ve gotten away at all, if it hadn’t been for the help of Sam and Callen, and it had been Steve’s word that sent him there. At least in part, Jack owes the fact that Mac came home to Steve, and it’s not something he’s going to forget any time soon.

As Jack is going over this, retroactively scaring the shit out of himself with all of the ways Mac could have not made it, all of the pieces that would have resulted in further injury, extended absence, even death, a sound at the other end of the room catches his attention. The subject of all the fuss himself has deigned to grace Jack with his presence, shuffling sleepily out of the hall and into the living room. It’s highly evident that he’d gone back to sleep after his shower with his hair still wet, but he’s wearing his own clothes this time, which is an improvement. Since he still doesn’t have an explanation that particular detail, Jack waits for Mac to move slowly over to the couch, collapsing with a small, involuntary pained noise onto one end of it, then walks over and sits down himself.

“So, what was with the getup?” he asks, and Mac’s head rolls to the side to squint at him. The movement prominently displays the gauze taped over the side of his head, hiding the stitches. Jack has to restrain a grimace, unable to reign in the pang that jolts through his heart.

“Getup?” Mac repeats, like he’s got no idea what Jack is talking about. He looks down at himself, dressed in a grantedly amusing fashion in his pajamas and a slightly-too-big hoodie.

“In the cabin, genius. What, you transform into an ACDC fan when I wasn’t paying attention?” The joking is even more gently affectionate than usual, no way it could possibly be mistaken for actual criticism, genuine antagonism.

Mac’s mouth forms a silent ‘oh’ and he nods, an indication, Jack believes, of comprehension rather than affirmation.

“I slipped,” Mac explains, like that means anything at all. “When I stuck my head under the shower faucet.” At Jack’s continued look of bewilderment, Mac elaborates. “I had to stay awake, in case… I don’t know. I was so tired and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. So I stuck my head under the faucet to wake myself up and I slipped, so I had to change.”

It’s hard to look at Mac like this, talking about what he’d been through with that awful bruise still purple and livid on his face, still looking sick and exhausted and vulnerable. Jack looks away, unable to bear it any longer. He sits in the quiet of the living room, the clock on the wall ticking comically loudly in the empty air.

“Alright,” Mac says finally, after a long pause. “My turn for a question.”

Jack gestures for him to proceed. “Shoot.” He has a bad feeling about where this is going, and it’s only confirmed when Mac speaks.

“Patti. You said you knew already. How did you know she was- That Nikki and the Organization had framed her? Did you…” Mac’s face is creased in confusion, and Jack is beginning to feel a little sick to his stomach. This is going to be it. There won’t be a way to get out of this conversation without talking about being benched, about how Mac’s team has been forced to abandon him. “Did you know before and just not- not tell me?”

“Of _course_ not.” That wasn’t the question Jack had been expecting. “No, man, hell no. We didn’t know until you went missing. Patti showed up the day you disappeared, she’s how we knew where to look for you.” Jack doesn’t mention that Patti had known thanks to Murdoc. That was a detail Mac didn’t need to know about, not yet and maybe not ever. There was already a difficult conversation to be had, Mac didn’t need the added reminder of more past trauma. The present trauma is plenty. “That’s how Sam and Callen made it to you.”

“Sam and-” The kid’s eyes go suddenly wide in understanding, then crinkle again almost immediately. “You _knew_ them? The two guys who-” Mac shakes his head a little too hard and winces. It must have jarred the stitches in his head, aggravated the concussion. “What’s going on?” There’s no comprehension in his face now at all, disbelief and deep, deep confusion twisted into his expression. “I thought something _happened_ to you guys, I thought you were really in trouble, and that’s why you didn’t-” Mac cuts himself off there, looking away nervously.

Jack’s heart breaks into impossibly more pieces as he puts two and two together. _That’s_ why Mac thought they hadn’t come for him. Why _Jack_ hadn’t come for him. He thought they’d been in danger, and Jack kicks himself as he realizes how much that explains the superhuman strength Mac summoned to make it from Roswell all the way to that cabin in Texas. _Of course_ it couldn’t have been to save _himself_ , to get _himself_ to safety. To Mac, his own life would never demand that much care and effort.

“So then- If you knew where I was, then why-” His speech is stilted and abrupt, Mac’s face locked in a frown as the gears in his brain visibly churn.

“There were…” _God, this is impossible to say_. But he has to say it. He owes it to Mac to say it. “There were orders, Mac, that kept me from being able to come and get you myself. Our whole team, all of Phoenix, none of us could do anything. We were hamstrung, it came from the boss. It was- it was the _last_ thing I wanted to do, but I didn’t have any option. Any good option, anyway. So, we called for outside help.”

The information is evidently difficult to process, which Jack understands. Mac’s eyes are still trained at his lap, where he’s picking at the splint immobilizing the fractured bone in his right hand with the fingers of his left. The expression on his face is unreadable, conflicted and changing by the moment. His wrists are still tightly wrapped, pain evident in the tense lines of his body, and Jack wishes he didn’t have to do this now. Not while Mac is still so hurt, still taken out at the knees and left with his defenses weakened. But Mac has to be told before he finds out from someone else, and now, with Riley and Bozer out, is the best opportunity.

“We didn’t have a choice, kid, I swear to you,” Jack says, voice soft and heavy with remorse. “They found out, somehow, that the infiltration went farther than they thought, with the Organization into the Phoenix. With the attempt to make it look like your dad was the one who took you, they said it would give away their investigation, show their hand, if we went charging off looking to pull you out of there when we weren’t supposed to know you were there to begin with. I fought Matty on it, but… We didn’t have a choice.”

“I understand.”

This, _this_ is exactly what Jack had been afraid of, in the car leaving the Foundation after Matty gave the orders to stand down. That, even worse than feeling betrayed or angry, Mac would swallow down his hurt, that age-old wound of abandonment and rationalize it. He would do a risk-reward assessment, calculate the value of one choice over the other, and value his life at zero when weighed against the mission.

“Mac, I-”

“No, it’s okay.” Still Mac won’t look Jack in the eyes. He’s picking at the splint harder now, and his fingers are shaking. It’s obvious he’s working hard to control his breathing, deep and too measured, with a tremor in the exhale. It isn’t okay, it _obviously_ isn’t okay, and Mac is fighting so hard to force himself to think it is that it’s manifesting physically. “I understand.”

“Mac-”

“Matty had a good reason, I understand why she made that call. It’s okay.”

“ _Matty_?” Clearly, some wires have gotten crossed here. “Hell no, it wasn’t Matty’s orders, she just had to enforce ‘em, this came from way higher up. People even she couldn’t say no to, or you bet your ass she’d have been right out there with me tearing the country apart until we brought you home safe and sound, you hear me? It was from Matty’s bosses. They’re the ones that made that call.”

It’s another detail of an already confusing story for Mac to try, amidst the persistent haze of a head injury, to sort through. Jack waits for it to sink in, watching his face. Mac is nodding now, small, shallow dips of his chin, his eyes unnaturally bright.

“You did what you had to do.” Mac looks up for a split second, then back down. “I understand.” The words, repeated for the fourth time, are barely louder than a breath.

“I really don’t think you do,” Jack refutes gently. “I didn’t do what I had to do, because what I _had_ to do was whatever was necessary to bring my boy home. I did what I was _forced_ to do.” Taking a risk, given that Mac’s gaze is still fixed downward, and there’s no telling how he’ll respond, Jack shifts closer on the couch, laying a hand over the back of his shoulder. “And I can tell you right now, son, I can’t ever do that again.”

It’s not clear what prompts it, the touch or the use of one of the fonder, less frequent of Jack’s many terms of reference to Mac, but the shuddering grows stronger, and Mac turns. Under a light, guiding pressure from the hand on his shoulder, Mac slumps over to the side, head landing with a small thump against Jack’s chest. He doesn’t say a word, just breathes harder in audible, damp inhales and exhales.

“We ever get an order like that again,” Jack continues after a pause wherein Mac noiselessly leans against him, “I won’t be able to follow it. It just about killed me, being stuck home while you were out there somewhere. We all barely made it. We can’t ever do anything like that again, it hurt too much.” Another, shorter pause while Jack gathers the wherewithal to say what he knows he needs to, but is nevertheless difficult to get out. “We love you too much- _I_ love you too much to sit back like that again, orders or no.”

Mac’s shoulders heave up and down in a heavy sigh, still unwilling or unable to say anything in response. But Jack isn’t done.

“And even though we couldn’t physically be out there looking, we never forgot about you, not for a second. You _weren’t_ alone in this,” he continues. Jack is speaking now directly down to where Mac’s head is tucked under his chin, blond hair brushing his jaw. “My buddy Steve, his friends Sam and Callen dropped everything to come and help us, the Coltons kept an eye on the cabin until we got there. There were people who were willing to help you around the nation, Steve was ready to get on a plane the minute I called him.” The memory makes Jack chuckle sadly. “He wants to meet you, by the way, he wants me to bring you all down to see him. Point is, he was ready to fly here from _Hawai’i_. And, you know what else? I can promise you that would keep being true even if we were gone. Your life _matters_ , kid, not just to us. To a lot of people, to everyone you’ve ever helped, to everyone _they’ve_ ever helped, way on out far. You could never just _disappear_. The world would notice if you were gone.”

There’s an indecipherable sound from Mac in response. Jack tightens his grip a little, mindful of the pain Mac is surely still experiencing.

“I promise, the world would care.”

Another noise, a huff of hitched breath, and Jack is somehow _more_ concerned.

“Are you okay?” It’s impossible to see Mac’s face from this angle. Jack slides his hand up, curling his palm over the side of Mac’s neck. “Mac?”

“You…” Mac’s voice is thready and choked up, and it takes Jack several moments to work out that he’s _laughing_. The jerk is _laughing_. “You are a human _Hallmark card_ , Jack.”

If things had been different, if Mac had been healthy and Jack hadn’t just spent the last couple of days wondering if he’d ever see his kid again, he might’ve shoved the smartass, socked him in the shoulder, in some way delivered a rebuke for the disingenuous response to Jack’s speech. As it stands, he settles for jostling Mac just a little, really barely shifting.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters good naturedly, a little relieved to have the heavy atmosphere broken, which had likely been Mac’s intention with the joke in the first place. The joke is somewhat undermined by the way Mac doesn’t move, doesn’t lift his head and shrug Jack off, re-establish some independence. Which is fine by Jack, who after the couple of days they’ve had, would be content to stay here all day.

Unfortunately, Mac has other ideas, ideas outside of just sitting there and letting Jack comfort him like he so rarely does when he’s been through another of the awful, _awful_ things that just won’t stop happening to him. He starts talking again.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and isn’t that just the last thing Jack wanted to hear out of him today.

“Excuse me? I didn’t just hear you apologize, because there’s absolutely no reason for you to have apologized to me, and you don’t do stupid shit for no reason.”

Now Mac does sit up, staying close, leaning his shoulder against Jack’s and avoiding eye contact. He points at the coffee table. Jack follows the line to where he’s pointing and sees the letters. He’d all but forgotten them, but there they are, somehow forgotten in the cleanup.

“I’m sorry for not telling you about them.” Mac still doesn’t look at them, dropping his hand back into his lap and returning to picking at his splint, a nervous tic usually masked by paperclips.

“Why didn’t you?” Jack asks, when he figures that Mac isn’t about to volunteer the information without being prodded into it.

“Because I think I knew it wasn’t him.” The shrug Mac gives is short and harsh and Jack winces. He felt it, and it had to have hurt, with the strain on Mac’s shoulders from being cuffed at that angle for so long. “And I knew that you would tell me as much. And I didn’t want to hear it, so I just… I didn’t tell you. And I’m sorry. I’d have told you eventually, I promise.”

Even if it hadn’t been for everything that’s happened, Jack doesn’t think he’d ever have been able to hold that against him. Not with all the history behind it, the way Mac’s dad has him all tied up in knots, always will, probably even after they sort it out, find the man and get some answers. So Jack shakes his head and tries to make his smile look reassuring rather than sad.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I know you would’ve.” And after all this time, after the progress Jack hopes they’ve made, he even thinks it’s true.

Bozer and Riley return with an indistinct conversation heralding their arrival through the door. They’re laughing and happy, and it’s a sound that makes Jack’s heart warm. After the stress and the fear, the horrible feeling of the last few days, it’s good to hear some joy inside this house. Mac has shifted back some, no longer leaning on Jack, though he’s remained closer on the couch than he normally would be. Bozer is waving a stack of three DVD cases at them when he rounds the couch, grinning widely.

“I thought you were going for one,” Jack comments, eyeing the movies.

“I was,” Bozer agrees, “but then Riley here wanted to get one-”

“If I’m gonna watch the _Dark Crystal_ again,” puts in Riley, “then I’m gonna pick something I like too.”

“And then how could I resist picking up the _Labyrinth_. All those Jim Henson puppets, come on.” With a final flourish of the DVD cases, Bozer sets about getting the first video queued up while the others get settled in for the evening.

The music begins to play, opening credits flickering light over the faces of Jack’s family. He’s watching them more than the screen. Bozer’s been running some kind of hushed commentary since before the home screen of the TV even booted up, Riley listening and nodding with fond exasperation in her expression. Next to Jack on the couch, Mac looks… calm. For the first time since Jack found him, there’s no pain visible on his face, physical or emotional. He’s tired as hell, and he’s definitely going to fall back asleep before the movie’s a quarter over, but he’s safe, and he’s home, and he isn’t in pain.

Finally, no one is in pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: none i can think of, except a handful of references to major character injury. 
> 
> feel free to come hang out with me on tumblr, i'm at altschmerzes over there! i'd love to chat, or take prompts, seeing as i'm now without a project. 
> 
> until next time! - gav


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